Happy New Year
Moments of Stillness, Moments of Grace
How many moments make up a year? 525,600 minutes or 31,536,000 seconds to be exact. How many blessings this year? Too many to count, comes my quick reply. Yet, in the quiet place in my heart, I wonder how many have I missed? I want to LIVE this coming year, fully and completely. How do I do this? How do I thrive? By setting goals, resolutions, working harder…?
From great writers and thinkers (Thoreau to Emerson) to philosophers and sages (Tolle and Angelo), the secret to happiness and the essence of well being is found in the moment or this very second.
Honestly, my challenge is that I am so busy counting my blessings that I somehow miss the blessing itself. An example is that when walking my dogs, I worry about the others that I left at home. (They typically let me know they are not happy being left out by their barks and squeals.) So I fret. Is my joy robbed? You bet. And, I am sure the walk is not as full of fun as it could be for the dogs either. I am surrounded by beauty but I am not able to fully absorb it. Breathe, that’s better. But (forget those ‘buts’, I hear myself say) not my best…still echoes.
Our horses have been trying to teach me to be still, really still and quiet. I do my best meditation in the barn. It is in the stillness that lets something bigger than myself inside. It is the letting go and giving up control (of the next moment, the never ending list of things to do, of the guilt of needing to do or be more) that allows something else to quietly settle. It is a paradox that by being still, even empty for a moment, that the fullness emerges. At the very least, my anxiety goes down a pinch or, at the very most, a new idea or feeling can blossom sweetly and true. Maybe, I might just find that connection I hear about and keenly sense just beyond the veil, but can’t quite grasp, with my horse. It is like I am looking through a glass, a glass of the noise in my head.
So what’s up with this ‘Happy New Year’ missive that doesn’t, on the surface, seems so happy? It is a reflection of (1) not only how much I yearn to grab every moment I can of 2020, but also (2) how much I need to let go and let the moments touch me. Wishing you an amazing 31,536,00 whispers of grace in the stillness.