🕯🌟
I’ve always been conflicted about resolutions at New Year’s, because I believe that we ought to be able to start over any day of the year. All we have to do is wake up on any given morning and say “right then, here we go”. But the turning of the year holds a lot of symbolism, and has its own powerful tilt, and it’s a good thing to harness —so here are a few thoughts to share this night.

Instead of resolving to improve something in the future, or leave behind something in the past, I want to pay more attention to the present. Here, where I am. The things that give me purpose and meaning, identity and joy are all here with me, now. Not yesterday and not tomorrow.
Here, now. They are just waiting to be noticed.

So are the small things: the smell of rain, the anticipation of a new book, the look in Angus’ eyes. These are gifts-And a gift of the pandemic is that it has allowed me to truly observe all 4 seasons here at the farm. It has been strange to realize that until I stopped traveling, I had never seen how utterly glorious that maple tree turns in the yard in October. Or how green the fields are in late June. And the slant of light on a fall twilight.
Or how the birdsong in spring in the early morning is a musical overture. I know how lucky I am to have these…I want to see more, listen more closely. These small things are my peace & inspiration and help me to be more fully myself in the world.

When it’s time to bid 2021 farewell, I hope that you too can tally the small things that are the lights of your days, the rhythms that you set your inner clock to, the quiet that we can invite into our noisy heads.

Every time that I crack open a fresh, new journal of blank pages I write the same thing on the first page, as a mantra: keep it simple.
And I should probably add Ms Dickinson’s wisdom as well, given that I already borrowed it for a song called New Year’s Day: I Dwell in Possibility…whispering that life is about creativity, expression, hope.

“In dreams or in our waking
It’s just enough to say
Love and grace and endless flowers
Be ours on New Year’s Day”

See you next year 💐
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newyearseve #home