Sunset and Grandmother Pinion - Death of the Day’s Light
If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. Mohandas Gandhi
Written in 1913, these words are thought to be the source of the oft cited ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world’ attributed to Gandhi. I discover the most interesting ‘facts’ about things I’ve heard or read before, but these days it’s challenging to know what is accurate. But that’s a musing for another day. Today my early morning musing took me on a reflection of death and rebirth.
To say that we’re surrounded by death as I started to write isn’t accurate because it implies we are separate from it, just as we’ve come to think that we are separate from Nature and Life itself. As I’ve said in many musings, many ways: we are not.
The continuity in our physical bodies, our life depends on the death of cells no longer serving. And on the rebirth of new cells that function on behalf of every breath we take. Our well-being. Our life.
We witness death and rebirth daily. The sun appears to set as the earth rotates bringing death, darkness to the day’s light only to rise again in the morning birthing the new light of a new day.
I wonder if we would see these natural cycles as ones of death and rebirth, we might be less fearful of changes that feel like death. Indeed, a change is the death one thing, a system or a cell, making way for the birth of another. Life and our daily lives are abundant with examples. The caterpillar must die for the butterfly to birth. We must enter the dark to return to the light.
Old systems and ways must be laid to rest for the new to emerge. … [I pause the Ink to pop outside to investigate the sound of pitter patter on the roof and am greeted by a pair of robins hopping about. I know Robin as a sign of new beginnings. Seems this musing is aligned with where we find ourselves to day.]
Recent elections around the globe and especially here in the U.S. seem to me to say ‘we the people’ demand change. Allowing old systems to dissolve, just as cells in our body systems do. Dismantling systems that are unjust and favor the few rather than all and Life. Co-creating new systems and nurturing them to fruition.
But what must be laid to rest is not just ‘out there’, something ‘they’ must do. The change we are in, the change we seek is both individual and collective. It is both mental and spiritual. What is required is not just different strategy that comes from our thinking minds, but care which comes from coherent, loving, open hearts.
As we hear the calls for old, unjust systems, ways, and leadership styles to be replaced, we must also ask, ‘what must die in me so that I may participate fully and authentically in building the new’? What must I change in me so that when the world changes toward me, I can embrace and nurture that world?
When we pivot more toward Life, all Life, by co-creating regenerative systems and making choices that are aligned, let’s delight in the bending of the world toward what we value: Life.
Sunrise - New Light is Birthed!