Moving On

The ritual of beginning again on the cusp of a year past, and the budding of a new one is important. It functions as a timely reminder to practice resilience; to take courage, and to care enough to get up and try again.

Our lives are worth caring about, but we don’t always treat them with the consideration and respect they deserve. Perhaps we feel our lives are too small and ordinary compared to the ones we see paraded on the internet. You could be forgiven for coming to this conclusion, but you’d be wrong. As the Bulgarian essayist Maria Popova has rightly observed, there are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives.

This is something that is easy to lose sight of. It is often hard to appreciate the beauty inherent in our lives, so setting aside time to take note of the current state of things at the beginning of a new year is a sensible thing to do. Starting a gratitude practice where you take time to acknowledge and savour the bounty and beauty of all you experience that is functional and positive, can be a useful step in the right direction. While this is an easy and perhaps obvious thing to do, it ought not to come at the expense of appreciating the darker more melancholy aspects, as they have soulful properties that can also give rise to goodness and beauty in our lives.

We all have a very human tendency to feel averse to experiences that are on the darker more challenging side of the spectrum, pushing any of the more troubling emotions away in the hopes of escaping. Trouble is, this rarely proves to be an effective maneuver in dealing with our problems. A more effective means of dealing with dark times is to face whatever is manifesting in the moment, by which I mean, give yourself time to be with the troubling emotions, no judgements about what is coming up, just be with them, notice them, befriend them. Let them come when they come, and let them go when they go. What you may find is that this simple act of friendship toward yourself helps take the edge off any angst, releasing some of the tension and stress, which then brings a sense of renewed openness. From here it is much easier to think constructively and discerningly about what comes next, which is another thing to be grateful for.

All that is dark and all that is light can contribute something useful and life-sustaining to our lives, but both sides need to be handled with great care and patience in order for insight and wisdom to make an appearance. A strong sense of equitability––learning to hold them in one’s self without so much fear or favour––helps bring this about. Moving on, therefore, isn’t a rejection of all that troubles us in favour of all that we find more pleasing; it is an invitation to move into deeper, more artful terrain where we learn to work with the whole of our lives more constructively, respectfully and bravely.

Love and courage.