Hi
In the sometimes melancholic, post-christmas nostalgia, we might be filled with hope for a new year or perhaps we feel that we need to look after ourselves more, to change something, to feel whole, to bring more meaning into our lives. It’s all there for the taking.
It’s at times like these, on the border between joy and sadness, walking the line between worlds; shortest day, the stillness of winter, the passing of what sometimes feels endless, that I’m reminded of the fact that we are alone in this world. Nobody can ever experience the life we live, the thoughts that make up our reality – the beauty that is who we are. Each one of us is the same but different; we are human but individual, a dazzling complexity of organic matter shaped into flesh on a quest for meaning and connection, of questions without answers, of boundless curiosity and creativity.
To revel on that uniqueness feels important to me. To acknowledge that the life span of a human is so short, when compared with that of an oak, or a stone, yet we are all made from the same stuff, in a constant interweaving of atoms which recycle and recreate – people, animals, mountains, oceans; the churning dissolution and adaptation that is Nature. The bigger picture. A picture, which itself is held in space, reflecting an eternity we cannot fathom.
Whatever this is, we are part of it, we are together within it. And this brings to the front of my mind, yet again, that we are one. Alone yet together and having to hold that and all its associated pressures as a concept and a reality. We seek unity yet we are separate. How do we hold all of this?
This is the bigger picture for me, seeing how I can explore this lifelong dance between me and others, subjective truth and reality, learned knowledge and trusting a deeper self-knowledge, the wisdom that made us what we are. It’s endlessly complex yet stunningly simple. We have had the wisdom to evolve yet so often we don’t trust that we are in a process of becoming known to ourselves we are in the ‘right place’ because there is no other place to be – we live in separateness when it is just one aspect of us. A larger aspect is unity.
This year I will spend more time with these sorts of thoughts, I’ll be bringing more of this into my work in nature connection and mindfulness and I’m committing more of my time to bringing people together. We are more powerful and beautiful than we know. Let’s share that beauty with each other and see what matters.
With a loving wish for joy and freedom in your life.
Alan
