Opening

There is so much none of us will understand. Our capacity to comprehend existence might be like a cricket trying to understand calculus. And that’s okay. Because life is less about knowing, and more about opening, anyway. Opening, for most of us, maybe all of us, is difficult. It involves risk, vulnerability, and uncertainty. Like a flower in spring, opening for the first time to the invitations of sunshine, there is no knowing beforehand what awaits on the other side. Closed is safe. Safe feels good. Then, through some organic necessity and curiosity that inheres, the allure of light resonates with something deep within, and the instinctual response, despite the unknowing of what lies ahead, gradually gives way to a bud blossoming. The opening is beautiful. Revealing color, pollen, nectar, new sights and scents to share with the world around, a flower’s fragility and vulnerability goes hand in hand with its beauty. This sharing, what we might view from a human standpoint as a kindness, is interwoven intimately with a flower’s artistic gift to the creation of which it is a part, a natural display of ethics and aesthetics together, as if the two are really one in the same, a lovely example for all to emulate.

Once open, some flowers remain so, while others find it appropriate to close at dusk, awaiting the right time to open again, while yet others prefer only to bloom at night, displaying a dark necessity, and filling out the gamut of flourishing in all its variety. We, too, exhibit the same natural tendency. Some wild within pines and squirms and yearns to open, under the right conditions, at the right time, and then, sometimes, to close again. This intuitive and ancient oscillation accords with the larger cosmic framework we find ourselves within: closing as vital as opening, our experience etched in the very same rhythms we witness in the rising and setting of the sun, the waxing and waning of the moon, the ebb and flow of the tides. Indeed, opening only means something because of a prior and often necessary closing, commonly occasioned by heartbreak, loss, trauma, and a seemingly endless array of thresholds presenting themselves to us, again and again, as we pendulate amidst the highs and lows and groundlessness of being. In any moment, you can open. At any time, you can close. The key, however, is discerning the best time for each, the movement to unlock the beauty of your being. In moments of pain, we may wish to close, when in fact we would do well to find the courage to open. And, in times of peace and relative stability, our inclination may be to open, when actually we would grow by closing our eyes and ears, and learning to look and listen more carefully within. You can gently claim your own being, by moving more rhythmically, allowing for expanding and contracting, giving yourself permission for decaying and flourishing, both closing and opening.