Then and now

Thanksgiving

There were a few of us elders busy in the kitchen on Thanksgiving day getting ready for the big meal. The appetizers had been served in the living room and most of the family was in there when Nightingale, she's in first grade, came up to me with a book of fifty 4x6 pictures I took of her between the ages of birth to 3 years.

I felt her tugging on my pants and I looked down. She'd opened to a picture of me holding her at about a year old and she said, in all seriousness, "What is the meaning of this?" (She's so cute!)

I look at the picture and then I look at her with a quizzical look on my face and she says, "The hair, Momo. Look at your hair! What happened?"

In the picture, my hair was brown, and now my hair is salt and pepper but looks full grey in the light of the sun.

I laughed and explained that a few years ago I decided to stop coloring my hair and so now it's my natural color. This happens to people as they get older I said.

And do you know what she said to me? "I like it better the way it is now."

This was an ordinary moment and yet it made my day. I felt validated somehow. Yes, by my 6-year-old granddaughter!

You see sometimes it feels hard for me to look in the mirror and notice the new wrinkles and the grey hair, especially since I still feel so young inside. But acceptance is key so I continue to affirm my inner and outer changes and try not to compare myself to others.

This comparing thing seems like a human malady. Especially comparing yourself to the beautiful, polished photos we see of happy people on social media.

I think we can have this fantasy that someone, somewhere is living in an ideal state of being. The hope is that if we just model ourselves after that perfect being we too can live out our perfect lives.

Nothing is perfect.

Yet everything is perfect just as it is. The challenge is to just accept what is.

We always seem to be striving for more, better, and different, or we are looking at what is NOT right in our lives.

As humans, we can struggle with a sense of lack. That I'm not enough stuff. We often want more beauty, wealth, intelligence, or power for example.

It shows up most vividly when we compare how we see ourselves and how we see the natural world.

When you are out in nature, say watching a chipmunk or a bird, do you ever think they should be different somehow? Is it not skinny enough, fast enough, or bright enough? Of course it is! We just accept those little critters as perfect just as they are. (Unless it's a squirrel in the bird feeder!)

Nature, at its core, is right.

Reminder: we are just fine as our natural selves. Yet, we don't always feel that way about our lives.

We are constantly making judgments of ourselves and others. This can be even more prevalent during the holidays because of the stress.

The spiritual path (that path of wisdom) is to accept ourselves exactly as we are and yet, still have the desire to improve our lives. It's a paradox that I've been pondering a lot lately.

One of the great Zen masters Shunryu Suzuki Roshi said to his students:

"You are perfect just the way you are, and you could use a little improvement."

So the moral of the story is, be nice to yourself.

Don't resist your "ordinary life."

Accept it as the gift that it is.

Count your blessings and focus on all that you DO have instead of what you think you lack.

If you do this, you can relax better into the holidays and take life as it comes.