Each day I read from a book of Taoist meditations. There are 365 readings and I am beginning my second year with this book. Today's reading spoke of disaster - the kind we all encounter as part of being alive. Disaster is the potential outcome of any series of events. Sometimes disasters can be avoided. Others, the so-called natural ones like earthquakes are clearly beyond our control. In fact the only thing really within our control is our response.
I say response rather than reaction. I want to make a distinction here by defining reaction as our immediate emotional state within the time during and immediately after a disaster. It is generally highly emotional, may include absolute panic and the best outcome is simple survival. However, our response is more nuanced and long-term. Our response can be to simply give up, to accept the fate apparently thrust upon us or it can be to resurrect our lives in new and profoundly different ways. It is as my reading today says choosing to be the ash or the Phoenix.
Like most people who have lived more than a few decades I have encountered my share of disasters. They are not on the scale of the horrors experienced by people in many parts of the world. I have never lived in a war zone or experienced life-threatening hunger or disease. Mine have been of the more personal kind: relationship failure, financial loss. Somewhere along the way I began to understand the difference between reaction and response. Somehow I was able to figure out that I could choose how I responded after my initial reaction.
I choose to be the Phoenix.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
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