Preparations

.
As the end of the year is approaching, there are all kinds of preparations going on…
Preparations for the Holidays; getting the decorations all in place, stocking up on candles; for the big dinner with family and friends… And then there is the New Year’s celebration that needs preparing for. And if you would wish to do so you can even prepare a list of resolutions for that magical date: January 1st.

With all the things that need to get done this year ~ things like finishing up work related items, getting the books in order etc. ~ and the preparations for the year end celebrations, it is easy to find yourself so busy that this other ‘turning point’ goes by almost unnoticed: the return of the light; the Winter solstice.

As far as preparations go, this may be the most important moment within the last ten days of the year. The ‘return of the light’ starts a period of turning inward, of examining what we have accomplished over the past year as well as looking at which things we would like to achieve in the year to come ~ and how we want to go about actually achieving those goals.
Those last ten days of the year, starting with the Winter solstice and going up to New Years Day when we state our New Years resolutions, are without question the best ten days for preparation ~ preparing ourselves for the year ahead.

The things to keep in mind when we prepare ourselves for what lies ahead are:
Choose as your goals the things you really desire, yet keep your goals realistic. In other words, set goals that as you work towards them, you will achieve.
Create a structure through which achieving your goals becomes easier. For instance, if your goal is to finally lose those ten pounds, find friends who will support you in doing so ~ or perhaps even friends who also want to lose some weight so you can reach your goals together.
Come up with a clear ‘milestone’ at which you recognize that you have reached the goals you set out to achieve.

Just like the Christmas dinner shopping list can get bigger and bigger as it is laying on the counter ~ so too can the list of our goals for the next year grow longer and longer. As this happens it is important we don’t set ourselves up for a continuous ‘overwhelm situation’ that lasts a year and makes reaching our goals harder than it needs to be ~ we are often better off choosing three goals: a personal or ‘inner’ goal, a work related goal, and a goal that either has to do with education, or with the way we experience and express our spirituality.

We know that preparing for the Holidays makes them even better!
And it is the same way with preparing ourselves for our next year…
.
.

Pinpoints

.
In the grand scheme of things it is often just a pinpoint that can be the catalyst for changes to start rolling into our lives. It can be a pinpoint of time, the moment when we suddenly know with absolute clarity that from here on out, nothing will be the same ever again. It can be a pinpoint in a situation; the point in the process at which we know with great certainty what the outcome will be, and how we can get there. That pinpoint of time, of energy, of experience that signifies a boundary between ‘before’ and ‘after’.

Sometimes those pinpoints in our lives are things that ~ according to a sensible, logical perspective ~ we wouldn’t have wished in our lives; or in anyone’s life for that matter. They can be accidents, illnesses, or even the experience of a great loss.
But they can also be enlightening experiences. It can be that moment when we finally take a step back, have a good look at ourselves and the situation we are finding ourselves in, only to start laughing ~ kind of like ‘How did a nice girl like me get in a place like this?’ And as the laughter breaks the tension of the situation, we may find that the world is a light and wide open space that is waiting at our feet…

These pinpoints all seem to mark a point in our lives where we change our attitudes, our outlooks; our perspectives on the world around us, and consequently how we view ourselves and our personal lives.
From now on everything will be different.

Yet while we expect changes to take effect overnight, this is not always the case.

In truth, how quickly we can start seeing the actual changes in our lives does depend on what is happening in our lives at that moment, the choices we feel we have and the decisions we make.

After having had an epiphany, we may choose to turn around and walk away from everything we have known and valued up to that (pin)point in life ~ making sure the changes to our lives are pretty much instantaneous.
Or we may go after changing our inner selves rather than the (outer) circumstances ~ in which case chances are the changes will take longer to take effect. After all, even though we know we have changed; we may not quite know exactly how we have changed; how our attitudes, our perspectives are now different ~ and therefore it may take time before we know precisely what we wish to change in our lives.

As time passes and we can look back on that period in our lives, one curious thing remains: we can always pinpoint with enormous accuracy at which moment we changed from ‘before’ to ‘after’.
.
.

Waste

.
There is an ever growing awareness on waste. How much we are wasting; what we are wasting ~ and its effect on our environment and the earth.

Pretty much the first thing that happened as we became aware of the negative effects our wasteful culture has, were a great number of recycling programs. Literally taking that which we throw away and making new products out of it. When you look around ~ at least where I live ~ you can recycle plastics, glass, metal, anything ‘green’ as in the little bits of vegetables we don’t want, up to the clippings from our gardens after having pruned the plants. And then there is any wood ~ trees or even wood from a remodel of our houses; bricks and other rest materials can be recycled. Even the corks from wine bottles can be recycled…
And this is a good thing!

However, the question remains why we have so much waste that we need these programs to recycle it?
Or perhaps an even bigger question; why are we okay with an attitude that says that if we no longer like what we have, we just throw it away?

It seems that the need to be ‘fashionable’ has never been greater. Having the right clothes, the right phones, the right furniture, the right car even are all more and more important. And when the fashion changes, our need to keep fitting in dictates us to throw out the old ~ even though the old is still very useable ~ and to bring in the new.
As this then becomes a pattern, we refuse to pay for quality items as we know that as soon as the fashion changes we will change with it ~ and hence the cycle of creating waste has started…

Ultimately, it is not the waste itself that may harm us in the long run; but rather the attitude that lies behind it. After all, if we are careful we can recycle and reuse a lot of the products we no longer want for whatever the reason.
Yet when we adopt an attitude that says that fitting in, becoming more like other people ~ for instance through wearing the same fashionable clothes etcetera ~  is more important than appreciating our own individuality; we may find ourselves on a slippery slope that can lead us to waste our uniqueness. And with that our distinct potentials may be left untapped ~ simply because they would set us apart from others rather than allowing us to fit in.

Now, that would definitely be a waste…
.
.

Tolerance

.
Those who visit the country where I live may say that it has a very tolerant culture. Having grown up here, and lived here pretty much all of my life ~ I’m not entirely sure about it…

According to the dictionary ‘tolerance’ means: showing willingness to allow the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with. It comes with a certain open-mindedness, an unbiased, patient attitude; and a sense that being forgiving ‘makes you the better man’.

The danger in being tolerant comes from being too permissive. To let it change into a mentality of ‘anything goes’. Even being so tolerant as to tolerate intolerance ~ something that does happen; all in the name of tolerance…

In order to create a an open, unprejudiced society ~ we have a tendency to regulate tolerance. We start putting up rules and regulations as to what we can and cannot say ~ at least in public. We vote for laws that take away all measure of inequality; in a sense doing away with the age-old adage that says: “May the best man win”. And pretty soon it is not the person that is best for the job that gets it, but rather the person that gives the company an appearance of equality.

This also has an effect on how we view history.
Rather than learning from the mistakes we have made as a culture ~ often at least a couple of hundreds of years ago ~ we set out to re-write history; or at least bring down all things that refer to events that happened long time ago.
Now granted, there are things that probably shouldn’t have happened; yet this attitude is a sign of intolerance. An intolerance to our past; and if there is an intolerance of our past, there is likely to be an intolerance of ourselves in the present…

In all reality we as a culture are a very tolerant culture; having crossed into extreme permissiveness. And when we feel that we might be too lenient in certain situations ~ we seem to be more apt to feel guilty about it, than we are likely to be patient, open-minded, or forgiving about it.
Another way to put that is that it looks like we are far more tolerant towards others than we are towards ourselves ~ while at the same time having the idea that ‘anything goes’. That to say anything, do anything; to do exactly what we want to do, when we want it is okay ~ without giving any thought as to how that would affect others.

Yet that is no tolerance, open-mindedness, or patience; that is just plain selfishness.
.
.

Time flies

.
Today when I woke up, I suddenly realized that we had already passed the threshold into December ~ just like that; quietly like a shadow sneaking up on you when the sun sets on a Summer evening. And with that came the thought of how I had lost track of time.
It seemed like only last week that Spring came by… And wasn’t it just like a couple of days ago that Summer started with its ever lengthening evenings. And Fall; Fall had only just started, right?

Wrong.
The whole year has flown by ~ day by day, week by week ~ leaving no trace as they left.

Looking back more closely now, I know that I have been quite busy. Done all sorts of things at all kinds of hours. And yet, at the same time it seems that the things I had set out to do this year are still patiently waiting for me to finally get to do them.
It seems that with each day a lot of things do get done; except for the things I had promised myself I’d do today.

When a discrepancy in the experience of time happens like that, it hardly ever last as long as an entire year… On the other hand it does happen more often than one might think. Every time a day goes by much more quickly than we had anticipated, it can be because we were distracted, scattered ~ or so focused on something, that we literally lost track of time. By the same token, days we would want to go by a bit more quickly can seem to last forever.
Either way it means we are slightly out of touch with time in that moment.

And as we are out of touch with time, we are also out of touch with energy. It is as if we are operating on a slightly different frequency than everything around us is.
Time and energy are funny that way; they do have that particular correlation. And as long as we ourselves are functioning in exactly the same frequency of the energy around us; we can easily do everything we set out to do that day ~ often with time to spare to have some fun. Yet as soon as we find ourselves in that slightly different frequency, our sense of timing ~ and with that our experience of time ~ is off.
We can be running ahead of ourselves, being so focused on all the things that need attention right now; all the things that need to be done today ~ that time flies by; leaving us with hardly enough time to get it all done. Or we can resist to get going on something ~ procrastinating ~ and finding that time stretches almost into infinity that day.

Either way there is merit in taking a moment in order to realign ourselves with the energies around us before moving ahead with the task at hand.
.
.