Reflection of the Week

“ For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. “

Today, I am reflecting on practicing patience with the right intentions. Why? Because I’ve realized something quietly humbling — good intentions are not the same as change. I have just learned that intentions, however noble, are not yet transformation.

A seed is not yet a tree. A vision is not yet a life lived.

So I am allowing myself to grow slowly, without forcing the becoming.

And where does one wander to behold a wonder so astonishing, to gather everlasting views of memory, and  to meet the meaningful moments waiting faithfully at dawn?

You do not travel. You do not chase.

You soften. You pause. You allow the morning to find you, where dawn opens its quiet hands without hurry, where light spills gently over yesterday’s worries, where the ordinary trembles with beauty too humble to announce itself.

It is here, in this stillness, that memory begins; 

not as something grand, but as something deeply, quietly alive.

Have you ever paused with that ancient image? a solitary monk at the edge of a restless stream, lifting a drowning scorpion from the current, again and again, though each rescue is answered with a sting? The monk who refuses to let the sharpness of another creature alter the quiet vow within his own heart.

I sometimes wonder whether you have encountered this story — so old it feels almost wind-worn, yet carrying a meaning that still breathes. How can a single, simple gesture — a hand extended in compassion — unfold into something timeless? It is only one small act. And yet, within it, there is an entire teaching about who we choose to be when the world presses back against us.

Have you ever paused long enough to hear a baby crow finding its voice? just right outside your balcony? To notice how the long, insistent ka-ka-ka softens — just once — into a single syllable,  into a vulnerable and soft “ka”… a pause  and a breath of silence… then “ka, ka”… and again the tender pause, as if the sky itself is teaching it how to speak?

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Have you watched a papa-scrub-jay and mama-scrub-jay — hop, hop, hop — moving like little blue sparks of devotion, quickly claiming a peanut treasure, then vanishing to the safety of rooftops and tree branches, as if they are in on a joyful secret?

And that fierce little squirrel — so indignant, so brilliant — rising before sunrise like a tiny monk of the morning, scaling the tall tree, leaping from balcony to branch — seven whole feet of fearless faith — all for the simple dignity of earning his well-earned peanuts.

Where does one witness such wonder?

In the quiet hours before the world rushes in. In small lives that cannot afford to waste a single dawn. In tiny hearts beating against hunger, against fear, against vast open skies.

It is beautiful. And it is tender.  And it hurts a little — because their bravery is so small, and the world is so large.

It is beautiful. And it is sorrowful.  Because everything so small must be so brave!

They arrive without ceremony. Small. Hungry. Uncertain. And all they ask for is space to exist. Just a tiny space to exist.

Three distinct species arrive with the morning. One loud and unapologetic. One sharp, indignant, demanding its share. Another summoning the entire family as though dawn were a festival table.

Feathers flash. Branches shake.

The air feels crowded with wings and insistence.

And the mind — oh, the mind — how quickly it calls this chaos. How quickly it labels the morning an atrocity simply because it is noisy, uninvited, alive.

How do we guide the mind toward the light behind the commotion?

How do we teach it to wait?  just long enough for nature to untangle what first appears as mess?

Because what seems like disorder is a choreography too intricate for impatience.

Should we condemn the mind for tiring so easily? For reaching toward the glowing screen — that glowing, hollow portal of endless scrolling, where silence is artificial and wonder requires no effort?

Or should we practice a gentler discipline — showing the mind, again and again, that this living, breathing spectacle is far more addictive than pixels?

That beneath the noise there is rhythm.

Beneath the irritation there is invitation.

Perhaps the lesson is not to silence the chaos, but to stay long enough for it to reveal its meaning.

When I first began this reflection, when I set these words down, I was not trying to unravel a profound or awakening quote.

It was the other way around.  

I was trying to quiet a troubled mind. Trying to persuade my own heart to accept what is already woven into the fabric of nature.

I noticed something restless within me — a preference, a quiet bias. I wished to feed only the species my heart found adorable, the timid ones, the gentle ones, the birds that stirred tenderness rather than irritation.

And yet, what of the loud ones?

The insistent ones. The ones whose calls pierce the soft fabric of morning.

They, too, are hungry. They, too, arrive with need in their small bodies.

So I asked my mind for a wider mercy. Let me offer them a chance. Let me not close my balcony window at the first discomfort.

Yes, I could end it at any moment. I could shut the glass against every uninvited wing. I could protect my peace with a single turning of the latch. But before I do — do they not deserve to be seen? to be heard? If I had never allowed them space, I would never have known what I now know.

And what is that?

That they are polite. Patient. Far more perceptive than I imagined.

They respect my time on my patio. When I ignore them, they do not press. They sense the boundary and honor it.

They are intelligent in ways that humble me. They have learned my rhythms. Sometimes I feel — perhaps foolishly, perhaps truly — that they respect me. And perhaps that is how they found their way into the quiet chambers of my heart.

So now, each of them is welcome at my balcony doorstep — the timid and the bold alike — so long as they do not unravel the fragile peace of my mornings. In giving them a chance, I was not merely feeding birds. I was teaching my own mind to widen the horizon.

But until I began to sit quietly with this remarkable saying, I felt adrift.

My mind was unmotivated, irritated, almost petulant in its complaints. And the most troubling part was this — all the reasons felt valid.

Every grievance had logic.

Every resistance had an argument.

There was nothing obviously wrong. And yet, nothing felt settled. Somewhere beneath the noise, I sensed a quieter truth: the answers I was searching for were not far away.

I did not need a new philosophy.

I did not need another revelation.

I did not need to travel outward to gather something exotic or rare.

What I needed, perhaps, was to return.

To revisit what I had already learned — lessons encountered again and again — but never fully allowed to steep within me.

Knowledge, familiar yet unreflected upon, like seeds stored but never planted.

And then I paused. And then I paused.

Out of all the quotes I had gathered, all the lines I had underlined and admired, one rose above the rest.

It did not whisper. It stood there before me — familiar, almost ordinary — and yet impossible to ignore.

Just two simple words:

good and evil.

Words I have known all my life. Words spoken casually, taught early, used without trembling.

What was it truly implying? For a moment, I felt suspended. Perplexed.

How was I to unravel something so enormous that was now staring directly back at me?

And I realized, with a quiet ache, that perhaps I was not meant to dissect them, but to let them unfold me!

I believe I understand the saying or at least I am sure stand near its threshold. At its core, does it not whisper that knowing is not the same as becoming?

That comprehension is only a lantern, and becoming is the long walk it must illuminate?

There is a quiet distance between what I understand and what I embody.

I intend what is good.

I recognize what is right.

I even feel a sincere longing to live it.

And yet — in the small, unguarded moments — I turn another way.

Because intention, however noble, is not yet transformation.

A seed is not yet a tree.

A vision is not yet a life lived.

Sometimes I watch myself as though from a slight distance:

Wanting patience — yet answering with anger.

Wanting discipline — yet drifting toward comfort.

Wanting compassion — yet rising in defense.

It is not always rebellion.

It is not always deliberate harm.

It is something subtler.

A fracture within the will.

A current pulling against the surface of resolve.

Perhaps the saying is not condemning us as morally broken, but revealing something deeper — an existential fragmentation.

A self not yet gathered. A heart divided between light and habit.

And in that tension — that honest, almost aching self-awareness — there is a strange grace.

Because to see the division is already to stand at its edge.

“I am not yet whole. I see the light — but I still walk in shadow.”

And maybe the shadow is not proof of failure,

but evidence of a journey still unfolding.

What would you say if I told you that sometimes a complicated restlessness can be softened by something beautifully small — reduced to its simplest form — even to something as ordinary as a bowl of peanuts?

You might say, I’m too busy for that. What could a bowl of peanuts possibly give me?

I would have said the same once.

But I discovered that I could trade a simple bowl of peanuts for something far greater — my early morning bliss. Before the sun lifts its first light across the sky, before I even slide open the balcony door, there they are: a family of crows and a pair of blue jays, and an angry and impatient squirrel waiting quietly among the branches of the monterey cypress outside the glass.

They do not rush me. They simply arrive.

And in their waiting, they have taught me something gentle and profound — how to practice patience with nature, how to soften my own hurried mind, how to let simplicity untangle what once felt complex.

All from a bowl of peanuts.

I am deeply grateful for them — not because they come for the food, but because they leave me with something far more nourishing than I ever offer. They leave me with stillness. With presence. With a quiet joy that lingers long after they have flown away.

Sometimes the answer to a restless mind is not something grand or life-altering. It does not arrive with thunder or revelation.

Sometimes it is small. So small it could rest in the palm of your hands.

And yet, somehow, it is enough.

Food for thought — pause and ponder!!

Will you? Can’t you?

What does it really take to make a change? Do we imagine it must be loud… costly… heroic? Is even a bag of peanuts too much to ask of ourselves? Then let it be smaller.

Let it be a quiet bowl resting by the window — nothing grand, nothing announced, no need for anyone to notice. Just something simple placed there with intention.

We speak so often of doing more, being more, giving more. But sometimes the heart is tired. Sometimes it trembles under the weight of its own expectations.

We wait for grand gestures to feel meaningful, yet sometimes it is the smallest offering that steadies the heart. Not a feast. Not a performance. Just a quiet act, repeated gently.

Compassion does not ask for abundance. It only asks for willingness.

And perhaps that is how we begin — not by doing something great, but by doing something small… faithfully, humbly, and with care.