Week Twenty-One: Keeping Optimism Alive

One morning this week - a week after the terrorist attack - I was in the process of working my way into exercising, which I didn't feel like doing at all. As I started a Tae Bo workout, I happened to look out one of my windows and saw some ropes hanging there, as workmen were doing something on scaffolding on upper floors of the building. Settled on one of the ropes right in front of my window was a large, beautiful dragonfly, its gossamer wings spread out on either side of the rope. As I continued my workout, I watched the dragonfly until he flew away. As he flew away, I was relieved to know that he was actually alive, and not just caught on the rope. He became, for me in that moment, a representation of a basic optimism that life goes on even in the face of terrible tragedy.

Earlier in the week, my sister celebrated one of those important birthdays with a big party. Initially, I was having trouble getting into a celebratory mood. On the day of the party, I was at a store buying some refreshments in large quantities, and a woman asked me if I were getting relief supplies for New York City. I said that I wasn't, that instead I was getting some things for my sister's birthday party and that I was having a hard time wanting to celebrate anything. She stepped up very close to me and said, emphatically, "Of course you'll go and celebrate your sister! She's alive, and we must celebrate life as fully as we can!" I felt as though she were an angel at that moment, because her message went right to my heart and I realized that she was completely right. I had an opportunity to celebrate the life of someone I love very dearly, and what a gift it was to be able to do that.

And so, for this week, I'd like to invite all of us to look for moments and signs of optimism that we can use to nourish ourselves. It's all too easy, in the face of overwhelming trauma, to forget that life is more than the tragedies that confront us. While we continue to acknowledge, feel, express, and work through our responses to the terrorist attacks - our grief, helplessness, anger, despair and whatever else we may feel - let's also nourish and support our sense that there is hope in life, that we can go on, and that there is beauty left in the world.

I don't have any particular suggestions about how to do this. Within the context of your own life experience, beliefs, and activities, give yourself an opportunity to discover light moments within the darkness, silly moments within the deep seriousness of what has happened, and delight mixed into the possibility of despair. We have an opportunity to demonstrate to ourselves that, in a world of wholeness, life follows death and creation follows destruction, even as we honor the terrible losses we have experienced. Allow yourself to notice life's affirming moments, the way I noticed the dragonfly outside my window. It may not seem like much, but it all adds up to rekindle hope, to reaffirm life.

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