Today it has gotten really cold again with a sharp north wind. The poor crocus who bloomed in last week's mild weather is closed and bent over and the olive tree is back under its covers. A lot has changed over the last few weeks, and not just in terms of the weather. We feel growth in life is best supported when the outside conditions are constant, when we have support and warmth. Sometimes, instead, we find inconsistency and even hard winds, those whom we rely on are not there, things do not go as we wished and we falter.
However, even if at times it is difficult, this type of change is good because we learn that we are not in charge of what happens over a period of weeks, even over a period of hours. Often we cannot choose what happens, just as we cannot choose the weather when we step out of work in the evening. However, what we can choose is how we respond. We naturally have a preference for the pleasant over the unpleasant, but the practice is to come back to what is happening now and to keep cultivating a mind that is not fighting with it.
