Honoring Life

We are not afraid to decide, to try, to step forward, to act, to express ourselves, to feel, to be... to be what we desire. We are alive.

What is life? A journey from birth to death, a chain of events, a handful of coincidences, some kind of plan, good fortune and misfortune... or is it something else?

Life is everything. Life holds both life and death, for death is part of life. We all know this. In every moment we die and are born again, over and over. Our body changes, our thoughts and feelings shift, our understanding of the world and of life evolves, our desires unfold. It is all a current of dying and being born. One form fades, another arises. It is an unending flow of energy that transforms and reveals itself in countless expressions.

Think of a seed that falls to the ground. It first exists as a seed, then it transforms and takes on a new form, for example a small tree. The seed has died, a sapling is born. The sapling grows into a sturdy trunk and a canopy filled with fragrant white blossoms. Then the blossoms wither and small fruits begin to form. They ripen into beautiful, juicy apples. Some rot on the ground, and some return to the soil, perhaps after passing through a creature’s digestive tract. The apples are gone. The tree remains. Season after season life flows on. It does not disappear. It only changes its form. One day even the tree dies, decays, and returns to the earth, and from that soil grass and flowers sprout. Bees visit the blossoms and turn part of the flower into honey. Life continues to move. Within that honey lies a trace of the very first seed that fell when the apple tree began to grow, now taking on a different form. In that honey lives the whole tale of becoming, without a beginning or an end.

Life is a current and there is no end, only a change of form. Death is what happens when we do not allow life to move, when we insist on clinging to a single form, whether a thing, a relationship, a feeling, a thought, a person, a job. Death is what happens when we refuse to change, when we fear the unknown, when we are afraid to express the life within us, when we hide what we truly feel, when we settle for what does not suit us, when we accept mere scraps of life, when we ignore what our heart tells us, when we want to keep everything exactly as it is, when we doubt that we are worthy of something lovelier, better, and more joyful. That is the only death. Everything else is life.

To honor life is to honor your own body and use it with gratitude, to honor your feelings and not fear expressing them, to honor your unique self and the full spectrum of differences in a universe of endless forms.

When we truly begin to honor every expression of life, we will feel genuine love, vitality, and freedom. Honor every part of yourself; when you feel beautiful or less so, content or angry, graceful or awkward, confused or fascinating. Honor every season of life; spring, summer, autumn, winter, youth, maturity, old age. Honor people of different views, appearances, skin colors, cultures, ways of acting, and understandings of life. Honor every form through which nature speaks; the seas, mountains, lakes, giraffes, ants, birds, clouds, the sun, the stars.

When we realize that everything differs in form yet is fashioned from the same essence, we will fall in love with life. We will stop judging, stop fighting for or against anything, and simply be life itself. We will understand that we are at this moment in one form and that everything around us is also in a form that changes in the very next moment, and so our relationship with it changes too. This is our relationship with life itself, a conversation we live through people, experiences, insights, things, and events in which we discover who we are.

Once we understand that we are life, we no longer cling to any form. We flow freely and explore without fear of losing anything. We are not afraid to choose, to try, to step forward, to act, to express ourselves, to feel, to be... to be what we desire. We are alive.