Spring Forward...
Y'all.
I know that for most of us, 2020 beat us like we stole something. Many ended the year with a profound sense of relief and a swirling mixture of exhaustion, hope and trepidation.
Surviving the year seemed to be its own reward, because not everyone did.
"What's next?" seems to be the most present question.
When you get hit hard enough, often enough, there's a tendency to try to shield yourself from more of the same or just "accept" that life is going to be difficult and gear your thinking toward managing it.
Or maybe you spend a lot of time angry at what happened.
That's kind of exhausting. I know, I've done it.
It's not truly the way things work except in the human brain, which can change its own mind at any time with a simple choice, if you feel like you have one (hint: you have one).
A shift of thinking is like a shift in the temperature.
Take a good, long, look at Mother Nature.
How fascinating is it that the land doesn't remember what an especially harsh winter did to it.
Come the Spring, the ground sprouts anyway.
How wonderful that trees don't lose all their leaves, spend a season naked and bare and say, "Well, I guess that's it for me."
They grow new leaves anyway.
How lucky for us that for every gorgeous bloom that crumples and falls, flowers bloom again.
Are we really so different? Only in our thinking. Flowers and trees "know" what they are here for.
Figure out what you are here for.
If you align yourself with your innermost essence (for you are also a part of nature) you'll recognize that some seasons are especially brutal. Most everyone suffers at some point. Some rough times seems to last forever.
But they don't. No matter how much they suspend growth, they can't stop it.
An especially sad season might bury you, like a hard, small seed.
You sit silent, cold and frustrated, waiting.
Yet...you might just be germinating.
You don't have spend your life feeling like a $3 haircut.
If there was ever a time to bloom your butt off, it's now.
That’s what Spring is for.