Acceptance

“The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the
pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself. . .
the latter I translate into a new tongue.” —Walt Whitman

Some mornings like this one my soul is so quiet, I can hear a leaf drop through the branches of the oak tree. I can sense the cool water in the stream that stretches all the way through the valley. I can listen to the infinite play of wind chimes.

Then there are days when a barking dog makes me want to bark back, louder. When serenity is tenuous, even the sound of a plane passing at thirty-five thousand feet can be enough to ruin the morning. Now after my heart attack planes do not perturb me as often as they used to. Even the sound of the young man's car radio boom, boom, booming doesn't bother me like it would have before.

On both kinds of days, the noisy and the quiet, the same challenge exists: to accept and, yes, even love whatever is taking place inside me. To see myself as many, to practice loving these seemingly opposite parts of myself is to begin to learn real love.