Dear Frau V.,
Your questions are unanswerable because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can. There is no single, definite way for the individual which is prescribed for him or would be the proper one. If that’s what you want you had best join the Catholic Church, where they tell you what’s what. Moreover this way fits in with the average way of mankind in general. But if you want to go your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and sure-footedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious.
Carl Jung
One could face the turning of the calendar without regard for a change; it is after all, just another day.
But one also gets to choose; perhaps you’ll notice a theme weaving through these meditations-that of choosing.
As I find myself now, a year turning into a new year where one has been fraught with uncertainty, pandemic, and worldwide unrest, it can be difficult to realize I can make a choice.
The choice here may not be about whether I can go out, travel far, meet new people, explore and expand my physical horizons; but choice, all the same.
As the calendar turns I remind myself of this. A choice can be made every day, in every way.
Today, the New Year day that leans into expectations and hopes for a future, I too do just that; lean in. Always in hope, because I am wired for this, but also with my feet firmly planted; earth-bound and grateful.
Where I have in years past had hope for big things, expansive growth, this year hope is planted in things closer to home.
Yet still; hope and choice.
My feet, firmly planted; my mind, reaching for the stars. How does one reconcile these seemingly diametric directions?
In realizing choice, once again. I get to choose to keep my feet firmly planted. In what way does this come to be?
In knowing my home better: Planting myself where I have chosen to be. In seeing with new eyes from this vantage point all that is already mine before me.
Then hope swirls through my head from this firmly planted place. What a revelation!
To realize dreams and aspirations, hopes and even expectations, can fly free and wild, all the while, and maybe only because, one’s feet find themself firmly planted in the ground called home.
Home that is unique to each of us, and in each interpretation.
Today my feet are planted and I look upon the earth before me, mucked up with winter-wear and dogs-play. I search through seed catalogs to expand my horizons into springtime weather where a new landscape, one I create, can bloom. I let my eyes see beyond the horizon of my fenceline into the places and faces for which I am here and will connect in the coming year.
Choice is the matter at hand as I turn the calendar to this new year, new day.
I choose to see the land before me full of my footfalls and my touch, all the while also reaching into the world outside my front door to welcome it, in expectation of beauty, gratitude, and fulfillment, whatever comes.
In love.
Trish