Melting Ice, Softening the Heart
Aquarius season is upon us!
The fixed sign energy that characterizes the middle of seasons is underway, including stability, continuity, and maintenance. My most consistent practice over the last year has been daily walks, and since I moved back to Wisconsin, I’ve had the great luck of visiting the lakeshore (almost) every day. In contrast to the above symbolism, the temperatures this winter have been pretty inconsistent, and so ice has been forming and melting, forming and melting. And I’ve been watching it as an object of meditation. I’ve mentioned before that nature gives me ideas, and I have one I’d like to share. It doesn’t have anything to do with astrology:
Melting ice on a rock as a metaphor for softening a hardened heart.
I was recently watching a layer of ice melt on top of a rock on a rare sunny day. Ice accumulates slowly, and its melting is also a slow process. Photon by photon, light energy hits the ice, melting it drop by drop. If the process were to continue uninterrupted, or long enough, eventually the rock would finally be exposed and open to the world.
Similar to this icy rock, hearts can harden. Hearts that undergo pain, wounding, rejection, and/or enough general difficulty in life often harden over time, creating a sometimes impenetrable layer that in many ways protects them from further pain. Unfortunately, this also makes it harder to connect with others; they close themselves off to the world, because the world hasn’t shown them it’s safe to be open to it. It’s all very reasonable. And like the photons in the light that melt the ice, kindness, acceptance, belonging, and patience can help soften and open hearts.
This takes time, and usually the process is interrupted. The sun gets covered up by clouds. The heart is wounded again. There’s a string of frigid days. The person faces yet another giant challenge. Snow falls on the ice, making it harder for photons to reach it. The heart is rejected. The ice re-hardens. Stops melting.
What we can do to help hardened hearts thaw, is to pretend we are all photons.
Each act of kindness, even the tiniest ones, help. Things like:
a smile
having even a minute more of patience
a kind “excuse me” to honor someone’s space
acknowledging someone’s suffering (not necessarily trying to fix it)
not reacting and adding to antagonism
active listening (not thinking about what you’ll say in response)
your simple presence with someone you love
All of these things help. And it takes many photons as consistantly as possible to melt ice. It takes each of us and many loving actions, as consistently as possible, to cultivate an environment where hearts can soften or open up.
What about mean people though? What about those we might consider “insufferable”?
It would be unhelpful for me to pretend like any of this is easy. Sometimes the hardest hearts are the easiest to dismiss, ignore, avoid, not engage with. But these are the people who need a sense of belonging, acceptance, patience, and kindness the most. To be clear, this does not mean we abandon our own self-care or healthy boundaries, but I’ll let each of us (and our therapists) discern where those lines are drawn. Sometimes acting out love requires us to be “the bigger person” (although I dislike that phrase, most people know what that means). So many things, including our own internal wounding, can cause resistance to opening our own hearts to troubled folks. The idea of all of this, is to make it as sustainable as possible, and so I do not encourage anyone to put themselves in harms way. Again, I leave it to the reader to be discerning.
It might be especially difficult to unthaw a heart if they do not receive consistent safety or understanding. If the photons are few and far in between, if the clouds keep blocking the Sun, if harm keeps happening. But we can all contribute to the cultivation of an environment that at least gives people a chance of opening up. Every moment is an opportunity to contribute a photon.
*Cue cynical eye roll*
If your eyes have rolled to the back of your head, if this has cheesed you out entirely, I am with you. All of this is a pretty lofty aspiration and one that I fail at regularly.
I’m not a patient person in certain circumstances.
I’m not always actively listening.
I regularly find myself not having the fortitude to be present with the reality of suffering that goes on around me or to people I know.
Many of us don’t believe kindness can be the answer because we haven’t been shown that ourselves. And that’s not unreasonable. I also believe there’s a place for rage and protest. However, (violence/discrimination not present) I have never once regretted going the kind or soft route with people or situations I run into. The situation I am in is almost always improved if I lead with care instead of hardness or dismissal. I wouldn’t have believed that had I not experimented with it and seen the results myself.
The Dalai Llama said,
“…the development of love and compassion is a wide round curve that can be negotiated only slowly, not a sharp corner that can be turned all at once. It comes with daily practice.”
Every single bit of warmth or small loving act helps. Every moment of sunshine helps. If we all contribute as much as sustainably possible, imagine how much of a difference we can make for the people around us.|*
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If you read this whole thing - WOW, you get a discount, my fellow photon: PHOTON20
*Despite this writing literally being about love and light, I am not a fan of the concept of “love and light” that is often part of spiritual bypassing and toxic positivity in spiritual communities. I didn’t realize this until I had already written it, and it is entirely coincidental. I’m literally talking about photon metaphors here LOL. #nerdalert