There are days when it feels easier to hide. There are days when staying in bed feels like the safest and surest way of staying alive. And there are days when all the pampering or self-preservation or coping techniques don’t make the slightest damn difference in the search for motivation.
Despite my assumed-penchant for an easy life, the truth remains that I don’t shy away from a challenge, and if I set my mind to doing something it overwhelmingly gets done. These days, the challenge can be simply making it through a morning, and I’m finding it more difficult to get going. I notice myself simply lying down on the couch or bed, or slouching into a chair, content to be lazy for this stretch of winter, content to be still. That’s ok for a moment, especially after the last year – and really, it could be said for any year. A year in the life of anyone is an accomplishment for merely surviving. No matter how lucky or unlucky you may feel, no matter how you might compare yourself to others, a year is a magnificent feat in and of itself. We should all be taking a congratulatory lap around whatever course we can get ourselves around.
So it is that I look ahead to the next year, with the wrinkles of wisdom and the gray hair of survival, with all the mistakes and mis-steps, and all the wondrous times when family and friends and fortune smiled upon me in spite of my foibles.
The year begins in the quiet fashion of this post, but I also want to include a little blossom of hope. The last time I was in Boston I walked through the Public Garden, a favorite haunt for so many vaunted reasons, and I found a few early cherry blossoms bravely defying the season and timeframe of Mother Nature. Climate change and global warming aside, it was a reminder that somewhere spring was still happening, even if it was just in my heart and head. It was also a reminder that spring would come again, even if we weren’t all here to witness it. And if spring can remain within us in a state of hope, then it never really went anywhere. That makes for a happy mindset.
