I don’t know about you, but 2017 is a year that I am pleased to see the back side of. Whatever alignment the planets were in, felt like a cosmological conspiracy to lay me down. And it almost succeeded! My couch became my haven and Netflix – my constant companion. We were inseparable.
So often I give lip service to listening to the small whispers brought on the breeze of intuition or the universe will slap us up the side of the head with something not to be ignored. If 2017 was a chapter in my book of life it could be titled “Do as I Say Not as I Do”. Admittedly, it was a year where my motivation and follow through were at an all time low. Depression? Lethargy? Burn out? Labels cannot really do it justice. My practice was to observe the “blah-titude” without getting sucked completely into a black hole of despair and self pity. Storms will come and storms will go.
Having always leaned toward optimism, I let myself flirt with pessimism. In today’s world, it is easy to find confirmation to support a lack of hope and confidence in the future. The challenge is to continue to hone optimism without aspiring to get totally lost in magical thinking. Yes, I do believe our thoughts contribute to reality, but they do have to align with so much more than positive affirmations and wishful thinking. We will play with that another day.
It was a year of learning and enforcing boundaries in relationships, stepping up to more career responsibility, and facing some hard truths about impermanence. In essence, each one of these was a gift. In practice, each one of these was an opportunity to surrender. It has never been my custom to surrender easily – I am stubborn that way. I reckon 2017 would have been a much smoother ride if I had that surrender thing nailed down. Now isn’t that juicy! What we resist, will persist.
Like the proverbial frog in hot water, the lessons were perpetual and persistent. December was the culmination when everything came to a full rolling boil. And there I was, still trying to tread water in a hot tub. No easy feat when a riptide threatens to toss and tumble you to the point of exhaustion. December landed me on my beloved couch with a next level lung infection; for the first time in decades, I could not will myself better without medical intervention.
Remember the part about being stubborn? Well, Stubborn has a best friend named Denial. Both of these traits contribute to my superpower which is the tenacity of Robocop when it comes to powering through adversity. Each attempt I made to get up, dust myself off and attend to job and family commitments, was an opportunity for the universe to turn up the heat. My computer crashed, a tree fell on my house, and every time I left my house there was something new to shake my head at. Truly.
Now it can also be said that it has taken me more than 5 decades to finally recognize that just because I can power through adversity, does not mean I have to. This was the message delivered to me throughout 2017 and this is the lesson I will take with me as I embrace another new year on this great earth.
I surrender! For 2018 I will surrender my superpower to the pursuit of peace, joy, clarity and more quiet moments in meditation. No longer will stubbornness and denial get top billing. No, January is a course correction and fingers crossed, I am setting sail to calmer waters.
Stay tuned as the journey continues……
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