love – Page 4

In Nature’s Gentle Presence – A Story of Healing

Depression crept in during what felt like the darkest phase of my life. Years of carrying unexpressed feelings had taken their toll – childhood hurts, trauma, and patterns I hadn’t even recognized. I had developed ways of coping that I didn’t even realize were coping mechanisms: trying to keep everyone happy to prevent any discord, bending backwards to maintain harmony. Yet paradoxically, I would sometimes experience sudden bursts of anger toward loved ones – reactions to hurt that would erupt because I had no other way to express my pain.

Growing up in a joint family, where multiple generations lived under one roof, I learned early to navigate around tensions. When voices were raised or feelings expressed too freely, punishment followed. These lessons stayed with me, shaping how I moved through relationships, always trying to keep peace at the cost of my own truth.

After my father’s passing, old hurts surfaced in ways I had never experienced. Grief opened doors I had kept tightly shut, and through them came waves of resentment and pain. Life seemed to conspire to bring more difficult experiences – harsh words from others that cut unusually deep. I felt myself breaking.

Ironically, in my darkest moments, I stopped doing the very things that had helped me before. Meditation, which had been my anchor, felt hollow. Talking to understanding friends seemed impossible. I retreated into silence, feeling utterly alone and unrecognizable to myself. The ways I had learned to cope, to find joy, to make sense of life – nothing seemed to work anymore. I felt lost in a deep shame, afraid to be alone with this version of myself I no longer knew. All my efforts to choose happiness felt like they had been just surface-level pretense.

But something in me kept moving. I started to run – not for fitness, but from an instinct to survive. I ran from my fear, my anxiety, my pain, pushing myself as far and as fast as I could. Tears would stream down my face as I ran, and I stopped caring who might see.

During this time, I also began talking therapy. These sessions helped me untangle mental knots I hadn’t even known were there, helping me understand patterns that had been invisible to me before. While therapy helped clear these mental blocks, nature offered something different.

Along my running route, I noticed a tree. It stood tall and kind, and something about its presence spoke to my heart. I began to stop at the bench overlooking this tree during my runs. I would sit there, relaxing my body as I had learned in meditation practice, talking to the tree as a friend. I found myself sharing freely about how I had been feeling, and asked for its help to find positivity and happiness again. Each day before leaving, I would hug and kiss the tree goodbye. These moments made me feel understood, assured, and strong – as if the tree knew exactly what I needed without words.

Gradually, I began to notice it wasn’t just this one tree – it was all of them. The plants, the breeze, the birds – they formed a supportive presence I can hardly put into words. Something deep within me recognized that I was part of this greater whole, all of us held in our Creator’s loving embrace. I wasn’t alone; I had never been alone.

I found myself spending more time outdoors, hiking alone, simply being with nature. My meditation practice returned, deeper now, grounded in this new understanding. Later, at a retreat, my spiritual teacher led us in meditation among the trees, and I understood why nature had felt so healing – when we open our hearts fully to the present moment, we can feel our Creator’s love flowing through everything around us, connecting us all.

Depression, though once so overwhelming, gradually lifted. The combination of therapy helping me understand my mind’s patterns, and nature helping me open my heart, created a path toward healing. Now, finding peace is as simple as sitting on my balcony among my plants, watching the sky, listening to birds. In these quiet moments, with my heart open and present, happiness flows naturally – not for any particular reason, but simply because I can feel our Creator’s love in everything around me.

This lesson remains: we humans aren’t separate entities striving alone, but integral parts of a greater whole, all held in our Creator’s loving embrace. In nature’s presence, I found not just healing, but a way back to that endless love that had been there all along.

Living as an Instrument of Love

Each year, I attend retreats with my Spiritual Teacher, Mr.Irmansyah Effendi, who guides us through deeper meditation and spiritual practices. Several years ago, I brought to him a confusion that was tearing me apart inside. I found myself contemplating leaving my job to dedicate my life to volunteer service. I was already volunteering at a hospice and a women’s shelter alongside my full-time work, and somehow I had created this internal conflict about whether I should be doing more.

My restlessness was making me less grateful for my current job, stealing my peace. When I shared this with my Teacher, his response, delivered with a gentle smile, changed everything.

He reminded me of the simple blessing of having a job that pays our bills, allows us to take vacations, and provides a comfortable life. Then he asked me something that shifted my entire perspective: “Why separate service from your everyday life? Service isn’t something you go somewhere else to do – it’s how you live each moment.”

He explained that I could serve simply by smiling at others from the Heart, by choosing and spreading happiness in my daily interactions. Even at work, especially at work, I could choose Love and Faith in challenging situations. Service, he showed me, wasn’t about changing what I do, but about transforming how I do it.

This insight completely changed my view of life and work. I realized we don’t need to wait for special occasions to serve – our daily life itself can be our offering to the world. When we act from our Heart, from that quiet space of connection with our Creator, everything naturally becomes service. The restless urge to quit my job faded away, replaced by a deeper understanding of how to serve right where I was.

My attitude at work transformed. I began seeing my role differently – not just as tasks to complete, but as opportunities to express care and sincerity. I looked after my customers and clients with genuine concern for how my work could help them. My approach to leadership evolved naturally – I found myself caring for my team members, thinking beyond individual achievements to our collective growth. In this way, work itself became a form of meditation, a way to express love through simple daily actions.

What started as a confused yearning to serve through volunteer work became something much more profound – the understanding that service is woven into the fabric of everyday life. It’s in how we treat our colleagues, how we approach our work, how we share our smile, how we choose love over frustration in challenging moments. When we stay connected to our Heart, every action becomes an expression of love.

I’m deeply grateful to my Spiritual Teacher and our Creator for this insight. It taught me that living with an open heart doesn’t require changing what we do – it transforms how we do everything we already do.

My Friend Who Taught Me to Choose Joy

I met Shobana in seventh grade, and something about her drew me instantly. Despite life’s challenges, she had this remarkable way of making everyone around her smile. Her energy was infectious – she could light up any room she entered.

She has this incredible gift for humor – it’s not just what she says, but how she says it. Her perfect timing, those deliberate pauses, the way she uses her expressions and gestures – she can make anyone burst into laughter. Even the simplest story becomes hilarious when she tells it.

She created her own style, wearing her father’s loose shirts with confidence, starting trends instead of following them. She was always surrounded by friends, both boys and girls, drawn to her natural warmth and authenticity.

Back then, my world felt heavy. Growing up in a home where anxiety and stress seemed to linger in the air, I struggled with low confidence and craved love and attention. While I found it hard to make friends, with Shobana, friendship came easily. We spent hours in mindless chatter and laughter. Those were simpler times – I would just hop on my bicycle and ride to her apartment whenever I wanted to see her.

Being an only child, she turned her whole apartment complex into a family. She had this gift of making instant connections with strangers, calling them brother or sister, making them feel like family or old friends. People who had never met her before would find themselves comfortable in her presence within minutes.

I admired everything about her. Sometimes I felt silently possessive of our friendship, but I never showed it – perhaps because I understood that trying to contain her joy would only diminish it. Looking back, that might have been my first lesson in unconditional love.

We remain best friends to this day, and I still feel the same wonder and gratitude about our friendship. Through her, I learned some of life’s most valuable lessons – how to keep things light, how to greet strangers with warmth, and most importantly, how to choose happiness despite life’s challenges. She was a blessing in my young life, and continues to be one, silently guiding me toward joy just by being who she is.

Our friendship taught me that true beauty lies in how we make others feel, and what a blessing it is to have someone in your life who can still make you laugh like you’re in seventh grade.

Simply by being herself, she showed me something precious – that keeping things light and finding reasons to laugh felt so much better than carrying the weight of worry and sadness. She taught me that having a sense of humor isn’t just about making jokes – it’s a way of moving through life, of finding lightness in ordinary moments, of transforming everyday situations into occasions for joy. This gift of seeing life through a lens of humor continues to remind me that there’s always room for laughter, always a way to lighten the heart, always a moment worth celebrating with a smile.