Looking and Seeing

The Forest or the Trees? by Barbara Helvey-Hughes, 2020

It’s funny how our lives travel in Circles – eternal, infinite, never-ending.  It doesn’t matter what word we put to the process and it doesn’t matter that most of us seldom “see” them: what matters is ~ we constantly work our way toward them, whether we know it or not.  I find comfort in understanding and in connecting dots.  I strive to “see the forest AND the trees”, but it’s virtually impossible when I’m crouched in ego-fear: when I can’t even identify my own hurt and emotional struggle, when I’m lost and sitting under my, singular, Tree.

The seeds of empathy and compassion often dwell inside resiliency.  Without ‘travelling through’ how do we gauge our arrival?  If not through hardships, especially emotional ones, how can we ever be anything other than complacent, detached and unfeeling, where others are involved?  In smugness, we always see the Tree (ours) and very seldom the Forest (everyone else).

While Peter and I explored our way through the Western states, this past summer, I came across a magical hand printed card, which read: “Giving you the forest ~ and the trees”.  It stopped me in my tracks and in typical Gemini fashion, I bought two.  One to give (someone in particular) and one to keep inspiring threads of thought in my brain.  I believed I had ‘lost’ the card until yesterday, when I ‘found’ it, in order to write a note to my favourite human in the entire world. 

Things do not happen in a vacuum.  So when a Dear One visited, yesterday, as I was smack dab in the middle of considering what I wanted to say to the recipient of the “tree card” and as my friend’s and my conversation wove its way to the idea of how we deal with anxiety, loneliness, emotional pain and general depression, the idea of seeing ‘either/or’ the trees/forest…..well, you know, these “AHA” moments are few and far between and I just had to shiver! I Love it when that happens!

Dots float around, everywhere.

It’s up to us to find them.

It’s up to us to attempt to connect them. (In all probability, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way.)

Exactly how do we (as Margery Williams suggests) Become?  Are we more aware of the process when we see the Forest, or the Trees?  I’ve come to believe it takes both.  When we deflect our own emotional upheavals and refuse to embrace them and to learn from them, how can we possibly be even remotely capable of empathy? Compassion?  Maybe the biggest, singular Secret is to Love ourselves enough to trudge through our very own feelings ~ our reactions to situations and our responses to experiences; gathering along the way, the Courage to let go of our ego-based fear, to embrace some kind of awareness of what others might be going through and to evolve into a more Loving, more Compassionate, Kinder, Empathetic and open human being. 

All the while journeying on the Road to Become.  It’s a process.  Sometimes, a long one.

I wrote something like this, in that card, yesterday: “I’ve seldom known anyone worth their stuff, who has not walked (usually wearily) through great suffering and pain, whether it’s Spiritual, emotional, mental or physical.”  These are the Awarenesses which, ultimately, come to define us. Which come to EXPAND us.

And it is true, isn’t it?  Those we most Love and come to admire, whether we ‘like’ them or not, whether we ‘agree’ with them, or not ~ our True Heroes ~ somehow mustered something from deep inside themselves, which assisted them, held them up and helped keep them moving FORWARD. 

Yes they struggle, they fall, they question, they might even rage at their circumstances, but then they put one foot in front of the other and they walk, and walk and Walk.  Suddenly, in a unique twinkling the Forest and the Trees, together, become visible.

Against all odds, maybe BECAUSE of all those odds, they RISE!

Many become the Angels, who help us along our own Way.  To those I say: Thank You.

Thank you for your unending Circle, intersecting with mine: Ours.

Love is the language spoken here. For PFM