Sometimes everyone has difficult times. At such times you bring all the strengths inside you together in order to stand strong again. You choose a dress that looks the nicest on you, smile at yourself in a mirror, and start your day. During a day, you focus on doing your best work.
However, when your busy day ends, you say goodbye to your colleagues, and go out from the office, ache silently comes back to you. As you walk back home in a crisp air of autumn, you look up at the sky and try to absorb the calmness and warmness of sunset. But your heart cannot touch quite well the beauty of the evening sky. A Zen monk, Thich Nhat Hanh says, “If you have a friend who is very close to you, who understands you, if you know that when you sit close to her, even without saying anything, you will feel better, then you can invite her image up into consciousness… Doing just this may be a big help in difficult moments.” “But it you have not seen your friend n a long time, her image may be too weak in your consciousness to come easily to you. If you know that she is the only person who can help you re-establish your balance…there is only one thing to do: buy a ticket and go to her…” (p. 76).
I have a couple of such close friends. All of them are schoolmates from my graduate school. I obtained my master’s degree in the US, and approximately thirty percent of the graduate students in my department were international students. They know me very well, including the weaknesses of mine. It is because studying away from my home country by using a foreign language was so tough for me that I did not have any room or time to play cool in front of them. Even now one of them makes fun of me, saying,” Are you still serious about everything?” After getting degrees, they went back to their counties. When I have difficult times, I wish I could be with them. However, it is not very easy to “buy a ticket and go to them.” They have their own lives in their countries, and I have my own life in this country.
Soon the sun goes down, and sunset dissolves into the dark sky. Then I see the moon rising in the eastern heavens. If it is a full moon, the moon brightly, yet gently, illuminates the lane along a creek, where walk. I remember what my friend who majored in Astrophysics told me: the moon phases are the same all around the world. This means on a day when I see a full moon, my friend in Korea also sees a smiling full moon. On a day I have a half moon, a half moon is also shining in the sky over my friend in Germany. Imagining all of my friends around the world seeing the same shape of the moon comforts me and warms me. I keep walking with the moon, as well as my friends, until I get home.
Reference:
- Nhat Hanh, T. (1991). Peace is every step. New York, NY: Bantam books.
Today’s music: Sure on This Shining Night by Morten Lauridsen
I think that the person in this music is also walking alone –but with a warm feeling—under the shining night sky.
A Smile on Your Lips 