Here we are.
The end of 2020.
A year ago we were all sitting around thinking WOW…2020. THIS is going to be a magical year!
And just a few months into it, our world was shattered.
Filled with sadness, stress, heart ache.
A year we will forever remember as one of the most challenging and worrisome.
But, as I have walked around my neighborhood the past many months I have seen incredible magic.
Neighbors out walking multi generationally as families quarantined together. Riding bikes as a family! Drive in movies have returned! Cooking and eating meals together instead of rushing off. Finding new ways to honor one another with drive by birthday/graduation parades! Halloween and now Holiday decorations that are like no other year! (Normally at the house, our outside decorations are at least “keeping up with the Jones’”, and this year #farmboy gave me only a “participation” medal!!! HAHAHAHA!)
But, the good part in all of this, and that comment…is I am at peace. I am working with what I can. I am happier for those around me and what they are achieving and not feeling competitive. Trust me…I still notice and think..” next year I want to….” BUT….
Having been forced to slow down. Having lost a family member to this craziness. Not being able to be with my mom as she navigates all of this….Having our businesses shut down and worry over our livelihood….This has allowed me to open my mind and heart to other possibilities. To feel the pain of others, and to find ways to soothe myself that are healthy.
I began to realize that the old rules/expectations just no longer apply. That we can, within reason, write new rules for ourselves. We can cast aside what we thought we needed to be and how we were to act for what really serves us. We don’t have to say “I HOPE we hold on to these new ways of living…” We CAN and really MUST take parts of our old world and our new world, and even parts that we wish we had already incorporated, and make all of THAT our #newrules.
Even FORD has a commercial this year saying….”make some joy this season”. My question, is why just this season? Oh,….and how can i get royalties for them using my almost “tagline”?
Really though….my walks here at the farm can be sort of magical, and unlike those at home. I feel intensely. I think intensely. And just yesterday I realized that this horrible Global Pandemic that has taken so much from us all; robbed us of our loved ones, of kids going to school and playing with friends, of feeling safe, of being able to socialize and eat out. However, it has also provided me with an internal rebirth and purpose.
I refuse to look back on this year as a total loss. I am not breaking quarantine rules, by living my life as if this really is not going on. I am working daily on not FREAKING out and YELLING at those who are disrespecting their lives and those of everyone else. (I think my guy holds his breathe a lot of the day not because he is afraid to breathe in tainted air, but because he is worried I will go APE SHIT on some total stranger about their negligence!)
I am allowing my internal clock to rediscover me! The me that does my own thing and likes to have creative moments and that likes to rise out of difficult times. The me who takes the moment to see the magic in the life around me.
I challenge you, as we count down these last days of a year like no other, to choose the magic that you want to enter 2021 with. Not to put an expectation on the New Year of what it is going to provide you, but rather what goodness you are going to bring with you and hold on to for the year.
Use your 2021 planner and fill it with magical moments where you are rebooting YOU and allowing YOU to shine and focus on the good in the world. I am in no way asking you to mask your feelings of sadness or blatantly disregard and not feel craziness. Just these past few days I have had anxiety attacks of astronomical proportions over learning of another man our age-ish, succumbing to Corona, and then seeing people without masks on. The crying in the grocery store kind of panic is what I have experienced. Which then turns into I MUST keep myself and my man healthy at ALL costs kind of anxiousness.
After moments such as that, I talk to my inner self and work to flip the rhetoric, and double down on me and us and goodness. I double down on showing and telling my #farmboy how much I love him. I double down on staying in communication with those people in my life that had slipped away over the years, but that this craziness has brought back to me. I double down on my creative side. I double down in being my honest and true self. I double down on my need and desire to connect and unite those around me. I double down on smiles, giving and receiving.
I am open to realizing all that I can control and all that I can not. Trust me…..I “ain’t” ZEN. Wish I was. But, I know that if I were to disappear today that I would want my legacy to be that of goodness and light and love and commitment and community. I would want those to know while I follow the rules, I also roll to my own beat. That when I put my feet on the floor each and every morning (after I lament on how cranky my back and legs are!) I am JOYOUS to be alive. I take a moment to think of those that are suffering whether from illness or sadness and I wish peace for them, and make a commitment to reach out. And I vow to live my life to the best of my ability that day. OK…I ALSO say I won’t eat any processed foods and not drink any alcohol…so, well, baby steps…
My wish and hope for each and every one of you is much good health to you and yours. Much joy, even if you have to dig deep and find it, there is a crumb out there every day to be found.
And really and truly I wish you much YOU!
The soaring spirit that only YOU have and that YOU can provide the world.
Much love all, and may 2021 be filled with and good health,
allison-joy 