You Won't Make January July

The other month, I was with my dear friend Sophie Redman teaching meditation to a group of Finnish people. Some of the participants were saying how dark and dreary Helsinki gets this time of year. I said, “But you must have ways of counteracting that, right? Lighting candles? Making your homes cozy?” “Not really,” one said. “We just get depressed for six months, then we’re fine.”

It was a joke, but it got me thinking about how scared of darkness we are in the United States. At the slightest dip in mood, confidence, or daylight, we hit the panic button, grasping for affirmations or medications. American spirituality is the same, teaching us to avoid darkness rather than understand it. But in that way, we have two problems: the darkness, and our failure to be present to life as it actually is.

It’s like someone who, sad about separating from a loved one, skips the goodbye and sneaks out the back. But avoiding goodbyes doesn’t make the pain of separation easier. It actually makes it harder. And life itself is a steady stream of goodbyes. We’re constantly parting from each passing moment. You can meet that truth with tenderness and compassion, or you can hide in fantasy and miss out on living.

The Buddha said that we live perched on the tip of a needle. We think we have a wide expanse of days and years, but we really only have this narrow, precise moment. The past is gone. The future doesn’t yet exist. This moment, dark and dreary though it may sometimes be, is the only place we'll ever find happiness. And if you keep wishing your time away, one day you’ll wake to find that it's all gone.

So be brave. Slow down. Turn toward the darkness, not away from it. There’s so much to learn here, and so much to be grateful for. You have to live the season you’re in. As Sophie says, “You won't make January July.”