The New Year is still fresh, and you have a list of resolutions, or maybe just one or two that really matter to you. Perhaps there are goals you want to achieve, and you’ve made a detailed plan. Well done, you! May your resolutions, goals and plans get you closer to what really matters to you.
Perhaps you’re in day-at-a-time mode. Just meeting each day as it comes takes all the motivation you can muster. Well done, you!! You’re persevering, and your courage shines.
Maybe you feel little whisperings from your soul, nothing you can put into words but you know something is beckoning and you want to respond. Well done, you! Listening to that which cannot be named is unsettling and uncomfortable. You’re doing difficult and beautiful work.
Perhaps the times in which we live and the horrors we see on the daily news feel so weighty that personal goals, intentions and invitations feel irrelevant. You feel overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. Thank you, dear one, for allowing yourself to feel all that needs to be felt. Let your heart stay soft and remember that tending your own tenderness is an invisible act of love for the whole of humanity.
In other words, no matter how you are beginning this new calendar year, you are doing it exactly right. In fact, you can’t do it wrong.
Let me say it again. You can’t do it wrong.
When it comes to tending our souls and being present to our own lives, there is no way to get it wrong. Being human comes with mistakes and stumbles and course-corrections.
This is a radically different message from what most of us have grown up believing. Religion tells us there’s only one way to please the difficult taskmaster called “God”. Capitalism relies on machine-like production of goods and services, all meeting certain quality control standards. The sharp divisions in our political landscape encourage us to view one another as either being right or wrong.
But in the world of the soul, there is no “wrong”. Everything we encounter can nurture our compassion for ourselves, and help us become better acquainted with our inner truth. Difficult and painful circumstances aren’t indicative of bad choices. They’re just what comes with the experience of being human.
How would you respond to this beginning time if you knew you couldn’t get it wrong? What if there was nothing about you that needed to be improved? What if being your authentic self, just as you are today, were the greatest gift you give to the world?
It’s all true, my friend. I am grateful for the light that is you.
