Once upon a time, there was a woman who stood on the cusp of the new year and grinned.
She grinned at all her past selves stretching behind her. Where once she would have judged those selves for their choices, now she bowed to them. They had brought her to this moment. Who would she be without them?
She grinned too at all the Januarys of years past when she had started a diet or a written a long list of Big Hairy Goals or felt her heart contract with a hectic fantasy of needed achievement.
She grinned at all the years she believed she had to do something, become something, fix something or someone.
She grinned too at the ways she had once compared herself to others, forgetting the wholeness at the root of life and instead believing it mattered who made what and who got credit.
She makes herself a cup of tea and curls up on the couch.
Ah, how adorable she was.
What is different now?
She still desires to create, to write books, to make art, to earn money, to visit far-flung places, to work for social justice, to soften the parts of herself that clench and hide. Of course, she does.
The difference, she realizes, is now she trusts herself to relax into the ever-present flow of life.
She trusts herself to remember, again and again and then again, to open to love, to let life live her.
She trusts life to carry her on a river of desire to ever greater intimacy with itself.
She giggles. It all sounds rather silly and over-blown.
But she feels the truth in her cells, this hard to put into words truth that life is something far bigger and richer and infinite than her plans and her thoughts and her funny story she has to do anything to be worthy.
And with another grin, she lets life carry her out for a walk.
Here’s to letting life animate, inspire, and carry you this year and every year.
