Mono no aware (物の哀れ)

A few years ago, I was introduced to Japanese Cherry Blossoms. They are a very big deal in Japan and even Washington, DC, has an annual Cherry Blossom Festival.

One of the most striking things about the blossoms was when an older gentlemen in Takayama was explaining to me the concept of mono no aware (物の哀れ) - the gentle sadness at the passing of beautiful things. or Mujō (無常): the Buddhist idea that nothing is permanent.

I now think of this every time I see the aspen leaves in colorado. They are my version of cherry blossoms. Strikingly stunning, a flouresent gold haze covers the forests. Walking in between them your entire world is bathed in gold only balanced by a crisp blue sky. It's unlike hiking any other time in Colorado. It's a completely different world, transformed by these tiny little leave simply transitioning from green to yellow.

This year, the moments that haven't been spent wandering in the aspen have been spent holding the hand of a dear human who has started the "actively dying" phase of Parkinsons.

And it has been challanging to go from one extreme to another. Physically and emotionally transitioning from literal light and beauty to the confines of a literally and spiritually dark space. I'm not sure how to hold them both and it is so tempting to retreat to the middle, to not visit, to not seek beauty, to not seek pain. Just stay safe.

And I'm reminded of a poem (which ironically has been watered down to an inscription on baby blankets, but I'm drawn to the veracity of the orirignal passage).

"Laß dir Alles geschehn: Schönheit und Schrecken. / Man muß nur gehn. Kein Gefühl ist das fernste." - roughly translated "Let everything happen to you, beauty and terror. Just keep going."

It's from a poem by Rilke

And I've thought of it frequently over the last few months. When I want to physically avoid the pain that comes with sitting next to someone suffering. Simultaneously, after sitting in that pain, it is so tempting to want to wallow. To spend the next day or week staying in that pain. Feeling it. Unable to hope for something better.

And there is a time for that.

A time for hopelessness and despair and lying on the floor in the darkness.

But also maybe there is a time to force yourself to keep going.

To fight the urge to sink into the darkness and fight for the light.

We weren't even going to go look at the leaves this year. The week before, they were still quite green. We just had a huge storm system which usually blows all the leaves off the trees. And we didn't have time to get to the high elevations we usually go to. I'm glad we took a chance. It turned out to be exactly what we needed.

A moment to soak in the beauty. Stand in a golden world. Listen to the rippling leaves and smell the pines. Because somehow standing in that grove of aspen renewed my soul. To come back and sit again at a bedside. Holding the hand of someone preparing to enter her next transition of life. I described to her the glow and showed her videos of the leaves blowing in the wind, bringing just the tiniest bit of the light with me into the darkness.

Roughly a decade later, Rilke wrote again in the Duino Elegies.

"Denn das Schöne ist nichts / als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen, / und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht, / uns zu zerstören." - Roughly translated: beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we can only just endure. We admire it so much because it calmly declines to destroy us.

I hope that your autumn and leaf peeing days are slightly more lighthearted and fun than mine have been this year. But I also hope that you take brief moment in this phyisical reminder that we will all turn to dust one day and soak up the beauty. It may be the strength you need to endure the next storm.

世は定めなきこそ、いみじけれ" It is precisely because the world is uncertain that it is so wonderful." - Kenkō, Essays in Idleness (14th century)