A Note For the Darkest Days

Weekly wisdom to bring you home in 3 minutes.

A SHORT STORY

As we approach the winter solstice, I’m often comforted by the image of Christmas tree lights everywhere. A reminder that in the darkest time of the year, the light will return again.

During the pandemic, when days blurred together and the world felt unusually quiet, I spent many hours facilitating conversations with my friend Geshe Tenzin Damchoe, a Tibetan monk who works with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India.

We would gather on screens from opposite sides of the world. And yet, the same questions kept arriving. How do we stay present with uncertainty? How do we embrace this moment as a time of possibility?

At the end of each conversation, Geshe-la would offer a short mantra. It was a few simple lines, spoken slowly, and then silence.

May I be the source of happiness
May I be the light to eliminate the darkness
May I be the wisdom to overcome ignorance

Lately, I’ve been returning to that mantra. Letting it slow me down. Letting it quiet my mind and soften my heart. Letting it remind me of something I know to be true.

What becomes possible if you let yourself pause long enough to listen?

A POEM

“We Can Make Our Minds So Like Still Water” by William Butler Yeats

We can make our minds
so like still water
that beings gather about us
that they may see,
it may be, their own images,
and live for a moment with a clearer,
perhaps even with a fiercer life
because of our quiet,
our silence.

Grateful,

Michael