This time of year usually sparks frenetic self-evaluation. How did I do over the past year — have I done enough, built enough, lived enough? What do I have yet to do? Resolve, do act. Tick tock tick tock.
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Perhaps it’s because I have no children, I felt like the buck stopped with me. I was the dam at the edge of a majestic river — so much pressure to do so much in a year, in a lifetime.
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The poet and philosopher, John O Donohue, points to Landscape as a magnificent teacher. In its stillness, it reminds us of our timelessness. Contemplate the mountains, the ocean, the rivers — ‘this landscape was the firstborn of creation and was here hundreds of millions of years before us. . . It knows what is actually going on’. We, in our brief lives, are mere guests.
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There is a kindness to taking on this wider perspective. Deep beyond our current fleeting manifestation, we are an eternal landscape of stars that connects us with other beings, and with generations that have come before us and that will come after us. We are all part of an infinite line of Life, and the dashes on our gravestones between the date of birth and the date of death is our contribution to this infinite line. We build on what was laid before us, while we do our best to set the foundation for who comes after. It is not necessary to build the whole house.
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We are not the dam. We are not where the buck stops. Instead, we are all part of an endless flow of river. There is gentleness and liberation in that thought.