INTENTIONS

Today is the last day of the year 2007. Ten years ago, in 1997 at age 69, I entered graduate school at Pacifica Graduate Institute in a program called Mythological Studies (with an emphasis in Depth Psychology). Five years later, in 2002, I was awarded a PhD. Those were extremely rewarding and enriching years, and I have benefited from my studies at Pacifica enormously, though not in any perceivable outward way. I did not launch myself into a new career, nor have I produced any scholarly works. I have, however, attempted (though sometimes failed spectacularly) to integrate my knowledge and my insights into my everyday life.

As the past ten years have been for me a trajectory of learning and growing intellectually and spiritually, for my husband of 59 years, the past decade has marked a decline into dementia. It seems a cruel irony that just as I began my exploration of academic fields such as mythology, anthropology, comparative religion, and depth psychology, Norm began to lose his memory and his cognitive abilities. I was sadly deprived of an opportunity to share with my mate the excitement of my studies. Instead I have had to draw on my inner strength, my love, and my patience, in ways I could never have imagined.

So, how do I greet this next decade, or--more realistically--this next year? New Year's Eve celebrations have always seemed to me to be occasions of forced gaiety, whereas this time of year might more appropriately be used as a time for quiet reflection and contemplation and as an opportunity to look back with the wisdom of hindsight and forward with a measure of hope. I no longer compose a list of resolutions, for too often they only remind me of my inability to fulfill them over a sustained period of time. But what I think is appropriate on this last day of 2007 is to state a simple intention, which is this: I shall endeavor to always be kind. If each of us could remember this simple rule, surely the world would be a better place.

I am reminded of a poem by the ancient Persian poet Hafiz, which addresses this very point:

It happens all the time in heaven,

And some day

It will begin to happen

Again on earth--

That men and women who are married,

And men and men who are

Lovers

And women and women

Who give each other

Light

Often will get down on their knees

And while so tenderly

Holding their lover's hand,

With tears in their eyes,

Will sincerely speak, saying,

"My dear,

How can I be more loving to you;

How can I be more

Kind?"

HALCYON DAYS

Not from successful love alone,
Nor wealth, nor honor’d middle age, nor victories of politics or war;
But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passion calm,
As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,
As softness, fullness, rest, suffuse the frame, like fresher, balmier air,
As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last
hangs really finish’d and indolent-ripe on the tree,
Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!
The brooding and blissful halcyon days!

---Walt Whitman (at age seventy)