It All Comes Around, Time and Again.
I’ve just been out walking the dogs, as I do most mornings. Scruffy, reminiscent of Snowy, Tin tins dog, is bounding around with the joy of life oozing from every pore of his body. Full of the joys of NOW, blissfully aware of nothing except this present moment. I often comment when I am Leading people on outdoor experiences how magical it is to just be aware of NOW, and it is.
However, as human beings we can be aware of NOW and how important it is to be aware of it, but we have some really special gifts that no other creature in this world has been given, and we are often blissfully unaware of just how awesome human beings can be and the gifts we have; imagination, perception, creativity, reason and memory, to name a few. That gives us real power to make choices.
If we look at our world we see change, perpetual change. Birds have been singing now with great passion and enthusiasm for a few weeks now, they are pairing up once more and look at their finest, they are nest building. Blackthorn blossom has just begun to paint the countryside and our road verges white, hellebores have been in flower for a while now, as have snow drops, and primroses are just starting to show. The dawn is coming to meet me now on my morning walks and once again I have added binoculars to my morning list as I take the dogs out for a walk and to give my gratitude to the world.
It will be Ostara on the 21st March, the spring equinox, where day and night are of equal length once more. It doesn’t seem like five minutes since I was celebrating the autumn equinox. The world turns, winter is about to turn into spring, which will inevitably be followed by summer and autumn. The natural world is full of hope, blissfully unaware of what’s happening elsewhere in the world.
With the power of technology now available in our world we have knowledge of all horizons and all events globally, politically and environmentally. We can make choices and choose our behaviour as we see appropriate. It can be difficult sometimes to see things from another’s point of view, looking past our own thoughts. This might lead to greater understanding, on a global scale and on a more personal scale too.
If we spend enough time thinking about a situation, we always manage to justify our actions. Always! The only difference is the scale we can think them on and the influence we wield over other people. Sometimes it is hard to remember we all have a choice.
That’s important, we always have a choice. We do, always. Sometimes the only choice is to accept there is little we can do, or accept that if we all do a little, it might be a lot… Or do what we can and let go of the things that we can’t change.
It helps to remember, as I said above though, that everything changes, nothing is constant. Two years ago, we were in the depths of a global pandemic and lockdowns have come and gone and it looks like the world is beginning to settle down now too, that cycle has slowed down.
Then the Russians decided they would like to put right some of their perceived wrongs and the atrocities occurring in Ukraine are rightly condemned by most of the known world. But one thing is for certain, the war will come to an end, albeit of an uncertain nature as I write this. And that brings around moral dilemmas as to how the rest of the world should respond.
All that is certain is that things will change. That’s true for us personally too. If you’re feeling down because nothing is working out, it will. Your job is too stressful, you’re running out of money or the cars broken down again, It’s not the first time you’ve been in that place, you survived last time, and you’ll survive again.
In the same way, if everything is rosy, you love your job, money’s coming in and you’ve just bought a new car, be aware of the joy of the situation and ride the tidal wave of it, because that will change again too.
Everything changes, constantly. Use those wonderful gifts we have, to plan a little, so that next time life takes a downward turn, it cannot go so far because we have learned and made changes.
Use the gifts we have, to learn from the past to give ourselves a more rosy future rather than catastrophise as we so often do. If you believe in fear then it’s not that big a shift to believe in faith too.
There is real hope in our countryside at this time of year, if you look, you can see it. Everything is either coming back to life or planning for it. Pick that emotion up and use it in whatever you do, because where ever you are, it will change. Your responsibility is to make the change positive in whatever way you can, whether that’s personally, globally, environmentally, politically and even humanitarian.
Use your knowledge of yesterday to plan for a better future and use that knowledge to fuel your understanding of, and what you can do, right NOW.
Scruffy is still jumping for joy. He doesn’t how else to act!
