Happy 2021

Will 2020 Ever End?

As I write, we are ten days into the New Year and any ideas we may have had about turning the page on 2020 and making a fresh start seem a million miles away. Frail as we feel, surely there must be something we can do to find shelter in our hearts, minds and spirits from this perfect storm?

Well the short answer is, yes there is. As humans we are the only species gifted with lives where we all can learn and grow in awareness and understanding. We are born with the unique opportunity to make choices that make our own lives, and then by association the lives of others, better on a minute by minute basis.

At first glance, compared to the scale of the pandemic say or racial injustice, this may seem like slight compensation but consider this: We have the power to shift our focus away from all that we can’t do anything about and bring our attention to the special gifts we have within us.

For example, wasting our nights on the hypnotic power of the news cycle that fills us with outrage and fury does nothing but impact our emotional and physical health This then negatively affects everyone around us. The more we focus on the external negative the bigger it gets and the more we are directly responsible for collective suffering.

We are only human and so obviously we are not in any position to fix everything although I am sure we would like to. We need to let go of this idea of mending all problems because it just trips us up, overwhelms us and turns us into powerless victims. And we are far from powerless.

For we arrive on this earth with a sacred duty to ourselves, and one another, to conduct our lives as if they were our spiritual practice, our liturgy, our prayer, our mission. It doesn’t matter what we choose to call it or what beliefs, or non-beliefs, we have. We are born with the capacity to choose either to make things better or to make things worse.

It’s my belief, then, that by not complicating things we will find the key to navigating these days because the truth is invariably simple to find: And let’s remember that the simple truth is that we are all in this together. So to be kind, to be humble and to hold no grudges means that we care for others as well as ourselves.

Also make commitments to only as many causes and initiatives where you know you can be fully present and effective in helping without overwhelming yourself. Looking around, the people who have the most beneficial influence today are the ones who show up fully, for themselves, for others and in the service of the greater good.

Let’s go 2021, there’s no time to waste, we have work to do.