Cool Grass

Shivering Never Felt This Good

Sound. Countless singing birds, breeze through trees, wind chimes, a faraway child.. 

Smell. Grass, sage meer feet away, outdoor air.

Sight. A blue sky with passing clouds, towering trees, a green lawn dotted with brown and purple.

Touch. Hard, uneven earth, the shade of a large tree, soft, cool grass. And, a shiver so slight I could relax it away if I wanted.

This was just part of the kaleidoscope of sensation I felt when I lay outside for 45 minutes today at lunch—exactly what I had been looking for just days ago when I lay in the sun (a terrible experience I wrote about in “Stuck to the Ground”).

This time, however, I did not fall asleep; I couldn’t possibly. I started with a brief meditation and was simply overwhelmed by the experience. 

Of course, I had the previous encounter with heat that caused so much difficulty, and reflection, and eventually gratitude to compare it to. It turns out though that I’m reflecting on this afternoon with the same sense of gratitude. No question, the experience itself was different, but I’m left feeling… the same. Before, I felt something like pain. Today: elation. But, the end result is simply more gratitude. Maybe I’m beating a dead horse, but I don’t think there’s another way to put it.

At the risk of venturing into the territory of cliché and aphorism, this is one of the clearest recognitions I’ve had that one can only really understand the positive in contrast with the negative. 

None of this is to say that we shouldn’t be ethically committed to minimizing suffering. Maybe the point is that such a commitment is different from striving for a uniform world devoid of shades of experience, as it were.

My next Reflections post, whatever it is, will not just be another car on the gratitude train, but somehow it just felt necessary to follow up.

All I can say in closing is that couldn’t be more grateful for that shiver. All Ihad wanted the last time was some relief from the heat, and I got it.