Another year comes to a close, offering us an opportunity for reflection. Perhaps more than most in recent memory, we’ll be glad to bid this year farewell. Its challenges were felt across the globe, and while cheers of “We’re all in this together” drew us closer with a sense of community and connection, we also witnessed deep division, mistrust, and isolation that threatened to pull us farther apart. Whatever this year held for each of us, may we find it in our hearts to look back with gratitude for its blessings, and to acknowledge the lessons we learned from its challenges.
Many of us might be looking eagerly to the new year as a time to start over, a clean slate – and given the way 2020 has unfolded, who could blame us. However, one of the most important lessons we learn in mindfulness practice is that we can always begin again – anytime, anywhere, right-here-now. We don’t need a new year, a new month, a new season; every day is new, every hour is new, every moment is a new opportunity to release what’s no longer serving us and begin again with an open heart and a fresh perspective.
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote: “Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully each moment, and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.” When we’re experiencing challenges – whether they’re physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual – it can sometimes feel as though there’s no relief in sight, no light at the end of the tunnel. But what if relief is waiting on the next breath? In the next moment? What if relief is found by waking up each morning and choosing to live fully each moment with kindness and compassion, beginning with ourselves?
Winter is a season of darkness, cold, stillness, and quietude. If we release our tendency toward constant busyness and activity, we can embrace the introspective energy of winter and nourish ourselves the way Mother Nature intended. We can welcome stillness, spend time in quiet reflection, withdraw from the cacophony around us to listen deeply within. With loving awareness, we can acknowledge our fears and anxiety, welcoming them as warmly as we do our joy. As we listen with kind attention to our inner wisdom, to our deepest self, our fears loosen their grip and we make our way to a state of ease and grace. Each day a challenge might present itself, and each day we can choose to respond to it with that same loving awareness and compassion, creating our own light at the end of the tunnel as we begin again. It’s a continual process: renewing our compassion for ourselves and others, forgiving ourselves and others when we or they falter, and then starting anew…again, and again, and again.
As we say goodbye to the year that was and welcome the year that will be, I wish you joy and good health, with deepest gratitude for your support. I leave you with the poetic wisdom of John O’Donohue.
For a New Beginning – by John O’Donohue
In out of the way places of the heart
Where your thoughts never think to wander
This beginning has been quietly forming
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire
Feeling the emptiness grow inside you
Noticing how you willed yourself on
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the grey promises that sameness whispered
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
