Fear vs. Wonder + Summer's Abundance... 🍒

Over the solstice weekend I drove through Summerland, a town in the interior of British Columbia where most of the province’s fruit and wine grapes grow. While the peaches and apricots were fuzzy green miniatures of themselves, the cherry trees were laden with crimson jewels.

Summerland runs alongside Lake Okanagan and lies next to Peachland. Don’t those two names conjure a sense of abundance? Across the lake sits Naramata and the Naramata Bench, a south facing ledge that produces some of the best wine in the region.

Surrounded by vineyards and orchards, especially those cherry trees full of ripe fruit, I marveled at the fact that every single tree provides hundreds if not thousands of pieces of fruit, and each piece of fruit carries the seed (or pit) of a potential tree. Every single tree carries the possibility of so many more trees, of so much more fruit. The idea made me happy, calm, and hopeful. Those feelings are harder to come by in a world going through so much chaos and change that fears are amplified, to say the least.

This got me thinking: staying in tune with the natural reality of abundance might be the antidote to the kind of scarcity mentality that underlies so many of our existential fears. Fears of loss, loneliness, pain, deprivation, conflict, danger. These are valid fears depending on circumstances, but have you ever noticed how so much of what we fear is “man made”? Most of our suffering comes from terrorizing and depriving each other. 

Nature’s tune is abundance. Look at leaves on trees, blades of grade in meadows, mushrooms in forests—have you ever seen the many poppy seeds that come from a single flower’s seed head?! Though, at times, Nature weathers droughts, fires, floods, and blight, and such events impact abundance, it's not usually for too long. Eventually Nature recovers.

The myriad fears we humans suffer from, natural and manufactured, impact our minds to the degree that we seem to remain in a perpetual fear loop, creating more and worse fears for ourselves and each other. How do we recover?

We frequently say that love is the opposite of fear, its antidote, but where is the love? How do we access it? Why doesn’t it flow more freely and hold back the tides of too much fear? Fears breed desires for control and domination, for convoluted excuses to justify strategies we say are for safety but which often lead to violence and create even more fear. We might even say it’s a justification for love, that this end is worth justifying any means. But I’m not convinced.

I believe the true antidote to fear is wonder. It’s the missing link on the way to love. A kind of bridge. Without a restored state of wonder, love does not bloom.

In a state of wonder, we let go of our preoccupation with fear. For a moment, or longer, we align with the miraculousness of the world as it is. Vital, varied, and abundant.

After recognizing this in our surroundings, it’s not not much of a leap to tune into that miraculousness in ourselves—and each other. A single breath sends oxygenated blood through our veins; a single smile lights up thousands of neurons in the brain of the smiler as well as the receiver of the smile; a single hug stimulates nerve endings and the release of hormones that trigger good and healing feelings.

We, too, are abundant aspects of Nature. Like the cherry tree, we bear the potential of much more than we at first appear to be. To quell fear—to not let it rot the fruit and wither the leaves of your life—nurture wonder. From there, it’s an easier leap to love.

"Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.”

~ Wayne Dyer ~

Uncertainty Springs Eternal 🌸

Even in uncertain times spring shows up. Cherry blossoms open to the sun, green shoots rise up from the dark earth, birdsong fills the air. Nature reminds us that life is change. Even in uncertain times.

And we are living them, aren’t we? We all feel it, globally and personally. And we’re all trained to do something about our feelings, even if we don’t know what that doing should be. But we also know that acting impulsively often has unwelcome consequences—an angry email sent too soon is regretted later, a piece of writing we don’t like is shredded or burned before its potential is revealed. A hot emotion craves release yet often leaves destruction its wake. That old advice to take a deep breath and count to ten? It’s good. Especially in uncertain times.

With all the chaos streaming around us, let’s make a conscious decision to not add to it. That takes some work. We need to be extra vigilante about recognizing our triggers and have constructive ways to deal with them; we need to be more aware that others feel just like us, maybe worse, and we must tolerate that and, on our good days, do something positive to uplift others; we also need to make extra room for what nourishes and sustains us personally. It’s not a time to go without good thoughts, words, and deeds. The extra effort will pay off in the moment and later.

So don’t give in to fear; expand courage. Don’t succumb to hate; rise to love and tolerance. Don’t surrender to despair; stand with possibility and vision.

As a writer you have the tools to do this at your fingertips— you can take the coldness of your despair and the heat of your rage to the page. Your hands can be channels of insight rather than fists of might. Don’t they say the pen is mightier than the sword? Ideas last longer than bruises.

I don’t mean to sound Pollyannaish here. Though I do believe writing is powerful action—words galvanize people to do both good and ill—other actions are no doubt required now too—voting, marching, engaging in difficult conversations with people who think differently (and consider reviewing Timothy Snyder's Twenty Lessons from On Tyranny).

Remember that you, as a writer, are trained to deal with uncertainty and chaos thanks to your practice of repeatedly facing the blank page. What does the blank page teach us? That the story isn’t fully written yet. In its blankness lies possibility, if we have the vision for it. Don’t sacrifice that vision to the storms of chaos. Preserve it, like the stillness in the eye of a storm. Purge your inner chaos onto the page—burn or shred that one if you want—and let the uncertainty of the times trigger not only fear, anger, and despair but also wisdom, love, vision, and tolerance.

The story’s still being written. Which part are you writing?

"The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next." 

~ Ursula K. LeGuin ~

“For the times they are a-changin'.”

~ Bob Dylan ~

P.S. The writings and creations of others can uplift, soothe, and strengthen in these times. Two Buddhist-themed books I turn to: Pema Chodron’s, Comfortable with Uncertainty and The Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan Watts. I also like to reread Paul Coelho’s, The Alchemist, and Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse now and again.

And just last week I watched the Oscar-winning animated feature, Flow, by Latvian director, Gints Zilbalodis. See this film! The literal wordlessness of it was wonderfully calming. Another, older favourite Oscar-winning animated feature is Hayao Miyazaki’s, Spirited Away—surreal, mystical, and heartfelt. Not wordless but wonderfully weird. (Japanese with English dubbing.)