Impermanence

As Activity Professionals, we are continually experiencing impermanence. In my last post, I mentioned that I am taking Susan Cain's interactive 1-month course on cultivating a bittersweet mind. The course helps me manage impermanece. Each day I receive a brief text or two, a meditation, artwork, music, and/or quote. Today I received the following poem:

Encounter

BY CZESLAW MILOSZ TRANSLATED BY CZESLAW MILOSZ AND LILLIAN VALLEE

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.
And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

                                                         Wilno, 1936

“Encounter” from The Collected Poems 1931-1987 by Czeslaw Milosz. Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalties, Inc. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Source: The Collected Poems 1931-1987 (The Ecco Press, 1988).  Poetry Foundation.

I am not there, viewing impermanence in awe, at least at the moment of loss. Maybe I will view impermanence in awe at some point in the future.

I do see how this poem helps me see the preciousness of life and loves.

Along the theme of impermanence, last night I viewed Sioux City, a 1994 film, streaming on Prime, about a Sioux Indian [now called Native American] boy given up for adoption to become a casualty department doctor fostered by two Jewish parents in LA. The film included lots of loss.

Activity Professionals are continually experiencing loss and certainly with the Pandemic, much impermanence. If you want to share, I am interested in learning how you manage loss and impermanece.