Every time the year turns, we think, I’ll try something new. Maybe it’s a new exercise regimen or diet, maybe it’s a noble effort to take up a new interest like playing an instrument or doing art, maybe it’s an intention to be more giving or relaxed. But let’s face it, more often than not we set our goals for the New Year and we fall short, giving us a very valid reason to judge and be disappointed in ourselves.
I have given up on the new years resolution idea. Instead, I have taken on more regular intention setting for the changing of my everyday Self. Every morning, I wake up a different person because everyday I gain another layer of experience that impacts the way I am in the world. As it is meant to be. How can I expect to hold the same intention in the same way for a whole 365 days? This does not acknowledge that I am human, and even more it does not acknowledge my very human nature to change based on the season within me. Do we hold the cottonwood tree to it’s green leaves? Or the large rock to it’s warm seat?
Everyday, the wind and the weather of the day changes us. I wake up to mark a threshold everyday, and to meet the trees who have also changes from the previous days weather. Everyday, I walk past a local park’s arch way, in a ceremony I actively partaking in, I set an intention for: compassion or peace or honesty or presence, whatever it is that I know I need that day (lately, it’s been an intention for positivity). And I tell every tree with a touch, this is my intention, knowing they are my witness and that I will be accepted in my process of learning to live into it no matter what. I cross the archway back home and I hold this brief time in nature as I move through the day. Knowing tomorrow, I may need another intent to guide me. Acknowledging that we are always changing, we can hold our every-changing human nature with truth, celebrating all we do to meet ourselves and live into who we are and the purpose of our lives.