the dharma blog

And so it those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.

- A River Runs through It, Norman Maclean

I have often thought to myself that life is a nothing more and nothing less than a quest for understanding. To understand the world, the people we love, and ourselves.

Understanding does not usually come easily. It seems that the more we understand someone, the more we are able to love them, but the more we love them, the more we also realize there is to understand. It is truly enough to fill a lifetime.

The same goes for ourselves. It seems incongruous, to know thyself should not be such a struggle. But it is.

In the utter stillness of our house late at night, I lay on the floor with Lola before bed and I know she feels cooped up in here, even when she goes outside she’s on a leash far more than she’s not. 

And then I stand on a wooded trail, the dog standing in the snow 25 yards ahead, paused from her running to and fro, white breath billowing, her whiskers frozen, and I see in her a joy so pure it blinds me even more than the midday sun on the clean snow.

And then, all at once, I see all of it in myself. The frustration of confinement, the joy of freedom.