Tough year behind us

Fairhaven terminal building

Yesterday morning my friends Don and Steve joined me for a walk from the coffee shop to Fairhaven, where we wanted to see the burned-out building that caught fire and was completely destroyed late on December 16. For weeks the authorities had suspected that a missing man had died in the fire. He had not been seen or heard from since the fire, and he often spent the night there, since he was the owner of both the coffee shop and restaurant housed in the building. They found a body that was identified as likely Nate Breaux a couple of days ago. An autopsy should confirm the identity. Nate's parents have been in the city for the past week, hoping for news, even if it wasn't what they hoped for.

Don, me, JJ and Steve

We walked across the street from the fire and sat down with JJ, who witnessed the whole thing, sort of. He's a statue of JJ Donovan, who moved to Fairhaven in 1888 to build a railroad to bring his coal from Skagit County to the newly established town of Fairhaven. He looks pretty dressed up compared to us, but I guess he was dressed for a special occasion. Maybe he was sculpted from a photograph, but I don't know for sure.

I'm convinced we will find out soon enough whose body they found, and I sure hope they find out two things: how the fire started, and a hope that Nate was not conscious but perhaps died of smoke inhalation before... well, you know. Anyway, it was just one more awful thing that happened during the year we will put to bed tonight. All the climate disasters, the wars, and more. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times put it quite well in his end-of-year post:

As the year ends, civilians are dying at a staggering pace in Gaza and the genocide in Darfur may be resuming. A man charged with 91 felonies is leading in American presidential polls, and our carbon emissions risk cooking our planet.

It's well worth reading the entire article, if you can find the time. This one ends on a hopeful note, and since we are all so tired of the unremittingly bad news, it's well worth a read. After viewing the remains of the building, we walked back the way we had come, covering more than five miles and enjoying the incredibly mild weather and lack of rain. It's almost ten degrees warmer than normal for this time of the year in our part of the country. We will probably get real winter weather before spring shows up, though.

 Last week I got a full measure of exercise, which has been hard for me to get lately, so I was pleased that I was able to hike with the Trailblazers both Tuesday and Thursday, and got almost a full six miles with the guys yesterday. I also worked out in the Senior Center's gym for some upper body exercise. Considering that my ancient body is holding up so well, I am feeling quite fortunate and grateful. I will take this state of happy equilibrium for as long as it lasts.

I'm sure that many of us are parceling the news into our daily diet carefully, so we don't get overwhelmed with it all. There's nothing to be done from my vantage point, although I still cannot help but get pulled down if I don't watch out. And that does nobody any good. Keeping a positive attitude is essential to my own health, and I suspect yours as well. And tomorrow we start a brand new year! Tonight the old year will be retired and the new one, filled with our hopes and desires for peace and tranquility, will arrive. Another milestone comes to give us a marker as we move through our lives.

I have been reading quite a lot on my Kindle lately, which makes it so much easier for me to see with its "low vision" setting. I can read for more than an hour before I need to stop and rest my eyes. If I allowed myself to get all gloomy over my failing eyesight, it wouldn't change anything except to make me sad, in the face of all the wonderful ways to appreciate being alive and functioning so well in the present moment. As I begin this new year, I am filled with optimism and hope.

I am also continuing to study Buddhism and find it very helpful to see how sages of the past went about their daily lives. I recently discovered what Buddhists call the three poisons, three things that make our lives so much better or worse, depending on how we deal with them. Those three poisons are GREED, ANGER, and IGNORANCE. What surprises me is how relevant these teachings are to today's world. Then I realize that we are all, every one of us as we move through time and space, in the same boat. We are humans trying to find ways to live our best lives.

The best part of looking at those three poisons is seeing how I might change them into their opposites in my own daily life. I am not often a greedy person, but I realize I can easily become more conscious of how I can share my bounty with others. It's what I am doing by writing this post, for one thing. Letting you know how I live and function in society. We (hubby and me) are in the phase of letting go of stuff, rather than amassing more of it. For Christmas we didn't exchange gifts; there is simply nothing that we need more of. Instead we enjoyed each other's company, good food, and (for me) some good beer. It is enough.

Anger is a little harder to deal with, since so much of what is going on in the world causes me to become upset and want to change things. Of course, the only thing I can really do something about is my own internal mindset. Taking a deep breath, realizing that my own state of mind is essential to my happiness, and saying a prayer for equilibrium always helps me in the moment. And I don't think that allowing myself to get angry does anything to change the outside world, but it does plenty to disrupt my own internal one. 

And finally, ignorance. We are all ignorant in some aspects, but there are ways to overcome it. Opening my mind to the wisdom of others, educating myself rather than sticking by old prejudices and habits. Ignorance can only be overcome by knowledge. We are all endowed with the incredible ability to learn and change our minds when we discover wisdom. It is available to anyone willing to let go of old ways of thinking. We can all become wise and compassionate.

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible. —Arthur C. Clarke

Those three poisons are ones that we can turn into their opposites, with enough of us willing to apply the medicine that heals us: loving kindness and compassion. I know it sounds impossible, but just writing about this has opened my heart to new ways of being in the world. Instead of a cramped feeling in my chest, I feel the expansion of love filling it and I feel myself opening up to joy. That is what I wish for you, too.

I am looking over at my dear partner, still sleeping next to me, and I know that today we will hug each other many times and share laughter together. Whether your day looks anything like mine, I sincerely hope that you will find your own ways to mitigate those three poisons and perhaps share them with me. Until we meet again next week, dear friends, I wish you all good things. Truly.