May Day

Today is May Day.   I have fond memories of May Day from my childhood.  Flowers and gardening were very big in my household and the households of my neighbors in rural Whatcom County.  Flowers were not hard to come by so it was easy to pick flowers and leave them on the doorsteps of our neighbors.  I looked up the tradition and it was actually baskets of flowers and treats you were to leave, which explains why we just left flowers, not being able to afford a basket.  But we had plenty of flowers.  My mother had planted trees when we arrived on the property, so a beautiful Japanese Cherry tree bloomed every year, with it's soft pink flowers on each branch.  We had a large lilac bush that bloomed, along with tulips, daffodils, and a variety of blooms that would surround our house with the colors of spring.


But ultimately this holiday is attributed to the arrival of spring, the half way point of time, November 1st through May 1st, an unofficial yet insistence of spring.  An insistence that the season of winter has ended, that there is light to the darkness.  Like the seasons, I believe we as human beings evolve and change in cycles.  While the world seems dark, the spring of renewal, awakening and enlightenment come.  It is through our seasons of darkness, our winters of seemingly never ending cold, bitter and dank conditions that we become dissatisfied, disheartened and disillusioned with what is.  We think that this darkness is never-ending, although through history we know this is not true.  The truth is that through our darkness we can look outside of our current season and see a different and brighter existence.   Yes, it's true that some appear to want to reside in our current state.  But to see these as "unenlightened" is a false sense of our own superiority and egoistic nature to feel better about ourselves on thinking more "enlightened" than others and is a waste of time.  Spring comes.  This is true.  The flowers bloom.  This is also true.  And to perpetuate that winter will never end is a false idea.   Spring comes.  With it's promise, an end to darkness.  This is the world I choose to see and live in.