Hope Without Prediction
Even though we often enjoy unseasonably warm days from mid-August onwards, the signature call of the Egyptian geese throughout the winter serves as a constant reminder of the true season. On such a balmy day, their call travels across the pathless fields of La Pinède, echoing beneath a windless blue sky.
But on my walk today, I saw a swallow gracefully drawing patterns in the sky as it swooped up high, then this way, then that. Although Aristotle, loosely translated, said, “One swallow does not a summer make,” for me, that one swallow holds the promise of the inevitable coming of summer. For now, it may be just one, but soon there will be a daytime silence as the Egyptian geese make way for the swallows.
On my FND journey, the “one swallow” proverb has taken on a special dual meaning.
On the one hand, it is a soft warning to remain grounded in reality; to be cautious about premature celebration. It reminds me to stay disciplined, because one positive sign does not mean the hard work is over, nor that everything has fully changed.
On the other hand, I see the proverb as a promise of hope. Even though that single swallow doesn’t create summer on its own, it is still an undeniable harbinger that summer is coming. It is evidence of shifting seasons: winter is losing its grip and summer is on its way.
So, while the phrase cautions against nurturing false hope, it also reminds me that the coming of summer is inevitable.
Balance is key. I am learning to hold space for both the caution and the promise. Depending on the mood du jour in my case, I need both viewpoints for my journey.
There is quite a storyteller in me somewhere, but the stories can sometimes be very tragic. That is when I need to be reminded that summer is still coming. The secret lies in recognising the storyteller in action and separating the stories from the facts. In other words, staying grounded in reality without being dragged into negativity.
An example from an ordinary day would be this: I might take a few bad steps, my walking pattern suddenly appearing a little scrambled. That is the fact of the moment.
Then the storyteller comes online.
“This is never going to get better. It is just getting worse. Now your walking is going to be like this the whole day long. You are going to have a bad day.”
I have found that the place of power in such a scenario is to catch the storyteller in action as early as possible, and then separate the stories from the facts of the moment.
The fact: my walking is not looking too great right now.
The story: this is never going to change.
One is fact. The other is pure conjecture, based on an imaginary future that has not arrived yet.
It is a practice, though. The storyteller runs like a program in the background until you start noticing it. And with its stories come all manner of negative emotions, which fan the flames of subsequent negative thoughts. These eventually gather momentum and invite other negative thoughts along the way, which in turn create more negative emotions.
It becomes a loop. Perhaps even a vortex of negativity that can draw you in deeper if you have no awareness of how the whole thing started.
So I have found that catching the stories early, and separating them from the actual reality in front of me, can stop the loop before it starts.
Since FND is so often a long journey, many revelations about the mechanics of the mind are revealed along the way. But this has become one of the most powerful tools I have found for the road of FND—and, perhaps, for any other difficult situation where the storyteller tries to fire up and add its two cents.
One swallow does not make a summer.
But one swallow can tell you that the season is changing.
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