As you find yourself hustling and bustling this time of year, are you – at any point, halted in your tracks by the abundance that fills your life? We are busy accumulating and giving. There is a flow of transactions occurring all around us. As I fall into a trance this time of year, weighted down by the flurry of money coming and going, people coming and going, while still facing the day to day reality of laundry, dishes, and grocery shopping, I am amazed. Truly, how can one not be? We pack more into our already filled up days and somehow make it work. We spend more money this time of year and somehow make it work. It is no wonder that when January comes blasting into our lives with its cold, hard, reality of buckling down and making plans to reign it all back in, we collapse and surrender to the truth of a new year. We might deceive ourselves in December, lost in magical thinking – but it doesn’t last. It never does. January is the ugly stepsister to December. Not only is December an end and January a beginning, but there is jubilation and delight the whole month of December and there is nothing about January that sparks this same level of celebration. Even New Year’s Eve occurs in December. Everyone wakes up on the first of January with trepidation and an awful taste in their mouth, holding a celebration in one hand and a fearful beginning in the other hand. It seems both life giving and insurmountable at the same time. An abundance that is too heavy to carry.
More and bigger
We live in a period of time like no other. We have more abundance than we know what to do with at times. Our houses are bigger, our lives are bigger. We set our sights on bigger things all the time. We desire to do more and to be more – always striving and filling ourselves up with events, experiences, and knowledge. There has never been a time that has allowed us the time we have now to even think about becoming better versions of ourselves each day. Think about the amount of reading material, workshops, online courses, and apps that are readily available at our fingertips to teach us something new. We accrue more and more, change, pivot, evolve, and become more abundant with skill sets, knowledge, and a compass of where we want to go and all we want to do. To even have the time to fathom possibilities and change in our lives is something that was not on the minds of our grandparents. Think about the fortune we have in our houses with indoor plumbing, refrigerators, washing machines (for clothes and dishes), that save us time and allow us to explore what else life has to offer.
The capacity to dream
Our lives are abundant like no other time in history and I think we can easily lose sight of this as we continue to look ahead and grow beyond our ancestors’ wildest dreams. I, for one, have never had to walk uphill both ways in snow with ill fitting shoes, to anywhere, ever. And since I don’t, think of the time available to me to dream up possibilities for my life. This abundance of time is what allows me to write this blog, learn yoga, make candles, all while raising three kids, and working a full-time job. I have access to so many things in my life that make my days efficient and don’t require me to use energy to push through arduous tasks that were not afforded to previous generations. I am truly thankful to be alive right now and to recognize that my life is abundant.
A new year
As we face the last few days of 2019 and step into 2020, stop for a few moments and look around you. Do you recognize the ways that your life is abundant? In what ways will you give credence to this abundance and set sail into the new year?
We have a responsibility to honor this abundance and use it to be kind, compassionate, and healthy human beings, making the world a better place, right where we are, just because we can.