Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Room For Healing


"Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy."

-Pema Chodron


Here I am at the start again. Every year a new beginning for the world. We all resolve to do better, be better, make huge changes. This year we will work on ourselves and by next year everything will be so different. We cling to the hope that this year, this year we will find happiness and leave the darkness behind us forever. How many days does it take for it all to fall apart again? Or is it mere hours? 

Last year I found a book that changed the way I approach these thoughts of wanting permanent change. So much energy goes into wanting things to be other than they are and so much suffering comes from the wanting. Slowly the words of Pema Chodron seeped in as I read her book When Things Fall Apart. I read through it twice over the course of 2012 and yesterday I started at the beginning again. New portions are showing more depth to me this time around. The section above resonated with me especially as I look ahead to a year full of .... full of what? I can't know. You can't know. All we can do is make room in our hearts and minds for all of it. The pain, the wonderment, the joy, the failure: it's all coming and we can't control anything but our own reaction, or non-reaction, to it all. 

What if we make room for every day as it comes? What if every day was an opportunity to start fresh?

Can we make every day New Year's Day?

(And yes, I realize I asked why we can't make Christmas Day every day and this does mean we have to combine holidays and make every day Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Two holidays are better than one right?)

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