That flash of lightning is as bright as the sun in mid-day form. It flashes through the blackest of night, through the drawn curtains, through my closed, sleeping eyelids even though I am as far from the windows in this room as can be.
Wondering about storms, mud and flowers
Suffering and Happiness
Thich Nhat Hanh says that the lotus flower cannot exist without mud to nourish and develop it. He uses mud and lotus flowers to paint pictures for people who are suffering. He encourages people to see that their suffering – the mud – contributes to their happiness – the lotus.
As a person who has suffered – which is actually redundant to write because all people have suffered to some extent – I have struggled to accept this concept of suffering being necessary to my happiness. According to the logical part of my mind, it would seem contraindicated, yet it is only because of suffering that I find myself in this place wondering about storms, mud and lotus flowers.
Finding peace again in my home
Traveling and Smiles
Without my suffering since the moment I was born, I would not have traveled the roads I have and experienced, with smiles, the adventures on my path. Can one really separate the suffering from happiness? Where would any depth of feeling originate if one didn’t experience both pain and sorrow and love and joy?
For example, I am never more joyful than when I find myself alone in my home after having experienced the pain of sharing my house for a couple summer months with guests who, through no fault necessarily of their own, have disrupted my peaceful existence. I have to admit that I was the one who invited them into my home. I have enjoyed making lasting friendships with a few of them. I did find a bit of happiness in their stories while they were here. Yet …
I am never happier than when they leave and I can find peace again anywhere in my house that I so choose. That peace is accentuated by their recent noisy departures. Would I feel the peace so deeply if I had not experienced their presence all summer?
Seeing things in a new light
Lightning, Thunder and Mud
As I lay on my grey couch alone in my home watching for lightning through my closed eyelids, I asked myself, “Why do we need storms with lightning and thunder when gentle rain would suffice to give all things life?”
In that moment, somehow, lightning and thunder seemed related to mud in a way that probably most people would not have seen as I did.
Suffering on my mind
Mud and Beauty
Oh, I know there is science to explain how lightning and thunder occur. Cold fronts meet warm fronts, etc., etc. The question is not how do they occur, but why do they occur?
The same can be said of sorrows. We can often explain – scientifically – the how of them. We can draw a timeline or connect that decision with that sorrow. If I had only done that, this would not have happened. If I had chosen not to do that, that next thing would not have occurred. But, why does any of it occur anyway?
This life on this planet would not have to be this way. I’m certain of it. This life on another planet would be different with less suffering or different with more suffering. And so with suffering on my mind yet again, I return to Thich Nhat Hanh and mud and lotus flowers. It does take the mud to provide beauty to the world. It does, therefore, take pain and sorrows to bring love and joy to the world as well.
Wrapping pain and sorrows
Love and Joy
I can wrap that pain and those sorrows in love and joy – hugs that provide comfort in ways that do not hide the pain and sorrows, but that allow them to be beside the love and joy, within the love and joy.
The bitter with the sweet. The tears with the laughter. I still feel the pain, yet I welcome it because I can see so much more clearly with it in sight next to joy. They, together, highlight all that I am grateful for. When I live with gratitude, in gratitude, I see so much more and receive so much more.
Which brings me to the answer of another question I asked myself recently. I know that we live in a balanced world – one where there is give and take, one where there is symbiosis. So, I ask you to ponder this – we can easily see what the mud does for the lotus flower, but what, say you, does the lotus flower do for the mud?
Sending you lotus flowers and mud to appreciate this whole experience called life,
Angela Jane