Space for Spring

By mid-May last year, I had a terrible sensation: that I’d missed the spring. Or that due to the fact that I had been working incredibly hard on a very exciting project, with the final crunch lasting from January to May, that I hadn’t paid spring any attention at all. How could I miss spring! What a waste!

I swore that this year it wouldn’t happen again. Now, in late February, the days in Madrid are getting warmer, just, and spring is hinting at its early arrival. The huge yellow-flowering mimosa tree on the corner of our street is just starting to come into flower.

Last year I did notice that, at least. The tree’s infinite, tiny, yellow sun-like blossoms together formed a vast yellow sun that blazed at the end of the street, the perfect example of interbeing – the sun in the sky, the sun-tree on the corner, the sun that was every one of its tiny blossom flowers, all perfectly interconnected.

I certainly noticed that tree, once or twice, as I rushed back to work, but little else! Now the tree is starting to burst into yellow flame again (see photo above!), and I realise that whether I miss spring or not this time round is entirely up to me. Whether I miss life or not is entirely up to me! Work isn’t the only thing that can keep my mind on other things. It’s capable of spinning off at the slightest excuse, and I can wander my way through to summer with my eyes down, and my thoughts consumed by all sorts of wild dramas and inventions if I’m not careful.

If I want to really see spring this year I’m going to have to really pay it attention. Walk through it and look at it, hear it, smell it, really see it! Spring is one of the most glorious miracles of life on earth. It’s the Great Unfolding, divine creativity painting the world anew. It’s nature’s explosive capacity to right itself and return again and again and again. It’s rebirth, and it’s continuation. Who’d want to miss that! What could be more important!

Though I’ve been less busy recently, once again I’ve just started a new project that comes to fruition at the beginning of May. I’m going to get busier. But I’m keeping a wide open space in my life for the spring and saying a clear ‘no’ to any extra work that might try to sneak in and get in its way. Who want’s to be so busy that they miss spring? (Or all of life’s other wonders?) It’s been two years since I last saw spring properly, and I’m already enjoying the first signs of this one.

“Once you are fully in the present moment, you touch all the wonders of life that are available within you and around you.

Your eyes are wonders of life.
Your heart is a wonder of life.
The blue sky is a wonder of life.
The songs of the birds are wonders of life.
If you are available to life, then life will be available to you.

All the wonders of the Kingdom of God are available to you today, at this very moment.”

– Thich Nhat Hanh