Winter Solstice

These are the happiest days of my life.  These are the saddest days of my life.  Read that again.  Is this even possible?  Can we be up and down at the same time?  These two sides to all things.  This yin and this yang.  This duality.  Balancing between these two opposing forces.  Trying to live somewhere in the middle.  The more that I work on myself.  The more that I let the things that don’t belong to me go.  The more that I let myself be happy.  The more that I also open myself up to sadness.  There is no other way.  I have come to understand that living is really about feeling.  All of it.  And in order to feel happiness, we also need to be willing to feel sadness.  One cannot exist without the other.  All the same.  All one.  This continuum.  Life’s circles.  Winter solstice.  The shortest day.  The longest night.  Closing this loop.  Mother nature showing us that a time for recovery is necessary after a time for prosperity.  That both darkness and light are a necessary part of life.  She is our true rhythm.  We can try to resist her.  But we must understand that mother does indeed know best.  May we have the courage to accept her dark season’s invitation to feel our own inner darkness.  Feel it to heal it.  As we patiently open to this re-emerging light.  

 

Authentic connection

Exhausting.  Walking around pretending.  One too many fake smiles.  More than enough phony conversations.  How’s it going?  We don’t really want to know.  We’re just trying to be polite by asking the question.  Hypocritical small talk.  Is silence just too uncomfortable?  I guess that’s why I prefer working from home.  I guess that’s also why I prefer being alone rather than socializing.  I just can’t stand the fakeness of it anymore.  Instead of squandering empty words into the air, I much prefer authentic connection.  I need it actually.  It feeds me.  Lifts me up.  Reminds me that life is so much more than all this pointless babble.  Last Friday.  The day after the coldest night of this season.  Feeling underdressed.  Rolling down my snow covered driveway.  A slap to my body’s face.  Blood pumping.  The spin of my legs cranking up my inner furnace.  That’s my favorite thing about getting out in the deep cold.  It shocks me into the present moment.  The crisp air instantly bringing me back to my body.  This thermal emergency.  The frosty air entering my lungs making me more aware of my breath.  Cold air is clear air.  Clear air is clear mind.  Cleansing.  As much as indoor riding has simply become too exhausting for me, riding outside in these harsh conditions gives me the authentic connection that I crave.  My bridge back to myself.  My bridge back to nature.  Me here for life.  Now.  Life here for me.  Now.

 

My very own board game of days

Eyes closed.  Tucked in under these white snow blankets.  These stripped trees.  Sound asleep.  Just like so many of these wild animals.  Hibernating.  These beings of light.  Their deep rooted innate sense of knowing.  Understanding that this dark season is rest season.  Recovering.  Renewing.  Taking the time to pay the bill for what the prosperous months have served.  This circle of life.  For as long as I can remember, I have always pictured calendar dates as a road map of sorts in my mind.  Kind of like the square boxes that player pieces move through when playing a board game.  Each day its own box.  With its own feel and challenges.   All strung together in succession.  The last box of the year adjacent to the first box of the year.  This illusory track that I have been looping around annually.  Its path not quite circular.  But not exactly square either.  Subtle turns on pivotal boxes.  Like on the first day of school in September.  And straightaways during the uneventful times of the year.  Like the main summer months.  July and August.  Easy.  Just cruise through the unbending open lane of boxes and enjoy the ride.  December is in the top left hand corner of my year circuit.  On a slight upward slant.  And the shade of the boxes is noticeably darker.  Leveling off and brightening up around Christmas.  My very own board game of days.  Painted long ago with the honest creativity of my inner child.   Unchanged my whole life.  Forever clearly plotted inside my head.  A pale spotlight highlighting the current day box.  The now.  A few weeks before the shortest day of the year.  The darkest box.  A time when all that I have suppressed during the brighter boxes is coming back up to the surface.  In my face.  Begging for my attention.  Eyes closed.  This rest season.  Recovering.  Renewing.  Purposefully waiting for my player piece to move onto brighter boxes.