Crystalized Hope
By Cara Chang Mutert
The season’s first blanketing of snow is so symbolic of the magic of a clean slate.
The beginning of each new year prompts most of us to look forward to new goals, new hopes and new vision. In the process, it often requires us to look back. To look at ways we could improve by reviewing what went well in the past and what we could do better.
Although the past few years have been riddled with pain and loss for too many of us, it also has the potential to lead to growth and deeper understanding. As difficult as life can get, the hardest moments usually make us stronger, and also help us recognize the smallest of moments can be the most meaningful.
Remembering the many great lives we lost, we have so much to learn from their lives. To see that we can endure adversity, overcome obstacles, and survive the unthinkable. And still at the end, to be able to say with assurance, it was a good life.
Often mired in the negativity of the daily grind, it’s easy to lose touch of what really matters, and the small gifts that we are granted each day. But at times like these, with another new year and an almost-post (hopefully) global pandemic, we have an opportunity to choose to see our world with fresh eyes.
By looking honestly at your life to this point, both the good and the not so much, it gives us fuel to consider new ways to approach what we want to create in life, to let go of the things that hinder you, to resolve the things that linger, and to accept the things that just simply are. Each situation we face provides us with choices and opportunities. The most challenging of which offer us the greatest of lessons. If we’re paying attention, those lessons are mostly about ourselves.
The divisiveness caused by pandemic has revealed our cultural tendency to point the finger and look at others to take the blame. A more useful approach, albeit most difficult, is to look more closely at ourselves and not only our role in the situation, but more importantly how we can either improve it, or at least shift our perspective so that we don’t suffer through it unnecessarily.
How do you adjust and adapt the narrative? To move away from anger, blame and bitterness towards responsibility, acceptance, and progress. Watching your thoughts and reactions to any given situation with openness and curiosity can open doors to interesting perspective, surprising answers, and if you stay with it, even a sense of peace with it all. Whatever it might be.
The realist in me sometimes can bristle at the façade of viewing life as sparkling rainbows and butterflies. But finding a sense of calm contentment in each moment, whether you’re trying to hold steady through a raging thunderstorm or enjoying a quiet snowy morning, is what we hope to attain through the practice of yoga. Through the discipline and regimen of regular practice, we can weed through the thicket of confusion, discover the clearing in the forest, and breathe in the freshness of a new beginning that can carry us into a place of clarity, evolution, and growth.
Wishing you all the peace and tufts of possibilities in 2022 of a bright snowy morning.