Past and Future

The ending of this year and the beginning of the next feel like a bridge between two whirlwinds of chaos. I’m leaving a space in time which brought me huge challenges and deep personal questioning. Now I’m looking toward a year that has multiple unknowns on many levels. AND I am not alone.

One could almost say that rather than a bridge there is the sense of ‘untetheredness’ where we can feel as if we are living between the worlds. A luminal space truly holding the potential of being an inner opening, a tunnel, not unlike a passageway of learning.

What can we do in this moment where we stop to take a breath before stepping into that which awaits us? What can we do to prepare for tomorrow?

One suggestion is to spend time reviewing the pluses and minuses of what we each have done in the last twelve months. Look carefully at the deep pitfalls, the mistakes, or missteps? How did we climb out, redirect our wrong turns into lessons, our misadventures into stories of strength? Were there plans made that didn’t work well or failed? Perhaps we can see now that something better happened in their stead? We can embrace the disappointments and trials as just those many events that happen in anyone’s life. With these acknowledgments then the successes, large and small, can be guideposts toward hope and give us a sense of personal success.

Finding the gifts of 2021 will give us useful insights on how to step into 2022.

And as we let our breaths rest between expiration and inspiration, we can admit to knowing nothing about our futures. We can relax into the awareness that seeds were planted in the past which can take root and surface in our lives as surprises, beyond our expectations.

May we hold hands in compassion, kindness, and strength. May we learn to stand together while we bring to our world the best of ourselves.