I do miss the rose coloured naivety of my pre-pandemic self; I am not sure where she has gone but I am hoping she packed her life jacket. Full of optimism and positive affirmations, she had just enough moxie and new age magical thinking to believe she was a Unicorn. The horizon always had a rainbow and she was on a path to find the metaphorical pot of gold. The interesting thing is that when you are lost at sea, the horizon is everywhere you look so it is hard to know which direction to set the sails on. This is not a good situation to be in if you are the least bit uncertain or indecisive of your path; you can spend years ricocheting around the universe hoping you will eventually stumble upon the promised land. Truth be told, a straight line is always the shortest distance between you and any destination. A quick Google search assured me that Unicorns are strong swimmers so…..
Just breathe.
Circle back to early 2020 when the world went quiet for a spell and you could actually feel the pulse of Mother Earth growing stronger. We woke up one morning to face a global dead wind which stalled out the course humanity was on and ushered in an opportunity to slow down and reevaluate all that we thought to be true. The effort needed to push through the dead wind would have likely sunk many ships, so instead, it challenged us to a wicked game of surrender. It’s a gift that keeps on giving and the game that never ends…
Deep breaths.
Whether you are someone who is an avid resolution maker or not, the New Year marks a fresh calendar and a potential systemic reboot; a cosmic “do-over” so to speak. As I sailed through the last few weeks of December 2021, I realized, for the first time in my life, that I had no conjured up expectations for how 2022 should be or feel. No resolutions were born – just a mustered, weary, resolve to stay afloat with my tattered sails catching just enough breeze to fight the currents. My resolve is to keep watch at the helm, stay mentally limber and to keep showing up for each new day ready to ride the next wave with some semblance of grace. My practice is to be okay to just ride the waves without trying to strong-arm the destination. For those of us still in recovery from our addiction to “control”, this is one of the many “gifts” the pandemic has brought.
And we are here now but where is exactly has 2022 brought us? I want to recognize and honour that many of us are feeling quite lost and out to sea; some are just barely treading water. Everyone is tired. Everyone is doing the best that they can to roll with the constant waves that keep assaulting our psyches. We are living in extremely challenging times and we are experiencing a breakdown of the very fabric that gives us the strength and security to handle storm force winds. Winds of change…and more change and…wait for it….change again.
In a world that has grown used to instant answers, it is a hard realization to sit with the fact that we truly don’t know where this is all leading. We can speculate, estimate and approximate all we want but in the end, we just have to subjugate our monkey minds and practice compassion and kindness with each other. We are all on this journey together which means giving wide berth to ideas and opinions that float up and bump against our stern. The only thing we have absolute dominion over is our reaction to things beyond our control. So take a deep breath and just hold onto it for a moment; gather any tension or stress your are feeling and breathe it out in a forceful whoosh! Rinse and repeat as needed.
No more shallow breathing. We’ve got this.
peace and blessings
dhar
Hope is the thing with feathers
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
~ Emily Dickinson
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