On my walk the other day, I witnessed a young hawk practicing its aerobatics.
It was taking full advantage of the stiff wind blowing down from the Columbia River Gorge. Dark clouds rimmed the horizon, a clear sign of the inevitable storms heading our way.
The hawk could not have cared less.
I was walking along the Vancouver Waterfront which has thankfully remained open during the pandemic. No one else was around. The hawk was perched on a pedestrian guardrail when I first saw it. It glanced at me as if to say, “Watch this!”
Then it hopped into the wind where it glided and soared without flapping its wings. (If it did flap its wings, I was too mesmerized to notice.)
The scene was magnificent.
I was merely a witness to that young hawk as I am a witness to all of life I see.
No Need to Fear Storms
Despite the stranglehold COVID-19 has on humanity right now, the rest of Nature is happily going about its business as usual. It doesn’t fear the unknown. It is not afraid of storms. What happens happens on a clock that is as old as earth itself.
The world is exploding right now with new life — lush, green plants with tender stalks are reaching toward the sun. Glorious, delicate flowers in shades of hot pink, deep purple, yellow, white, and red are everywhere if you take the time to look.
The air smells like cottonwood, woodsy and earthy. The scent puts me in past springs of my life when things weren’t complicated and yet were also complicated.
This spring — the spring of 2020 — seems especially lush to me despite what’s raging on a global scale. Maybe it’s because I’m paying more attention to the natural world than usual. Maybe it’s because this year simply happens to be exceptionally lush in the cycle of lushness.
Regardless of the reason, I’m grateful for the small reminders everywhere I look that Life is eternal. That this phase of my life is richer than I expected. That when I lay my head on my pillow each night, I have so much to be grateful for.
It’s okay that I’m not on the verge of inventing the next great thing. Or hitting the latest set of KPIs in my business. It’s okay that some afternoons I choose to take a nap instead of pushing through another two hours on the laptop.
I trust my process.
I trust myself to show up, to share, to be generous, to do the work. That’s not always easy. I am not always pleasant. But at the end of the day, I know I did my best and loved deeply even if I was grumpy doing it.
In the stones of the fountain along the river’s edge are quotes carved in black letters. The one that stood out to me is this one:
“I am not afraid of storms,
Louisa May Alcott
For I’m learning
To sail my ship.”
Damn straight I am.
And my guess is, so are you.
