Courage, comfort, and 3 questions
WHEW. Here we are, one week into 2022.
This time of year swirls with lots of intention-making and goal-setting - very fulfilling practices, if they can provide us with a sense of familiar agency and control.
We’re also quite a ways into a global pandemic, dealing with a kind of durational stress, uncertainty, and grief that makes navigating the world around us an ongoing feat of will power and creative adaptation (...and perhaps moments of uncontrollable crying on the floor.)
As such, the satisfaction, comfort, and familiarity one may normally derive from goal-setting may be significantly challenged by the present situation.
There is a kind of brilliance to the Shadowlands of our psyches: when the sense of agency we seek doesn’t come through in one way, other mechanisms jump on-board to help. As such, the guests of self-criticism, shame, and blame may also arrive to provide us with a sense of control - inviting us to walk well-worn grooves in our inner landscapes and dive into familiar stories. When what is happening in the world seems completely out of our hands, there is a way in which dwelling on our personal failures can become its own form of comfort.
In lieu of focusing on intentions and goals (and the various Shadow guests they can inevitably bring to the table) I am curious about the ways in which we can grow to understand, trust, and connect more deeply: with ourselves, each other, and the world we live in. I am curious about how we return home, even when multitudes of stories swirl and confuse and overwhelm our senses. I am curious about how we remember our own power and find solid ground beneath our feet in moments when everything seems to be falling apart. I am curious about the dreams that give us courage to carry on.
As we enter into these early weeks of January, I want to pose three questions through which to reflect on 2021 and welcome the months to come:
What did you come to understand about yourself over the course of 2021?
What are ways in which you can trust yourself given this new understanding?
What may this new trust allow you to build and create in your life in 2022 that wasn’t possible before?
The root of the English word for courage, after all, is “cor” - the heart of ourselves, the core of our humanity. May it be this core that guides us forward and forms the solid foundation for the months to come.