Rhythms of time.
These last two series are about celebrating each moment of life.
And of course, each moment has its own flavour, and no moment is ever really repeated, but the cycles of the year and the cycle of the day provide us with these sort of recurring flavours of moments.
And I find there’s something great about letting these shine and bringing out these special qualities of each moment.
Each of these will depend on our own situation in the world, so depending on what kind of climate we’re in.
Some of them are based on the weather, and that depends on how the seasons are where we live.
Some of them are based on our cultural traditions of when we have holidays.
But the same idea is there, just with different details, that we can choose to notice all these changes through the yearly cycle and celebrate them.
And I just find there’s something about it that helps to bring out that appreciation of the moment.
So for the year, for me, we have, of course, new year’s.
The new year’s day: beginning.
You have this feeling of freshness.
Anything can happen.
There’s a feeling of taking on new direction, a new sense of focus, beginning of a new project.
Just the freshness of that new year number helps to bring that out.
Then there’s the sort of feeling of sluggishly actually getting into work after the holiday, that whole returning into the flow of business after the holiday season that sort of takes over in mid-January.
February: Groundhog Day: that’s when all that has worn off, all of the new year shine has worn off, and then it goes into just cold, grey winter.
And that’s when the challenge sets in of really are we going to continue our new year’s resolutions, continue the new path? Or this is around the time when the weaker of new year’s resolutions die.
Then we get on to the spring equinox.
And for this year, it happened in the middle of the COVID lockdown, so for me it was a reminder that we can always trust the sun.
No matter what’s going on under the sun, what’s going on in the world and even in the weather, in nature, but the way in which the earth is spinning and spinning around the sun: it’s very steady.
There’s nothing that’s suddenly going to change it, as far as we can expect.
So there’s just a feeling of trust that comes with the sun will always be brighter and will come back in the spring, no matter what else is happening.
Then as we go into the summer, there’s this feeling of heading out into the sunshine.
There’s a feeling of going out into the world, having an adventure, building something, planting something, going something new.
Something new that is created in the summer.
We reach the midpoint of summer, that feeling where you can just start to feel that return coming back down again.
The sun is starting to go back.
And that for me, in my climate here in Toronto, is followed by what I think of as the summer siesta, that feeling of heatwave, this July heat where it just makes me sleepy, and I have sort of a period of laziness that kind of sets in.
I think of it as the siesta of the year.
Then it goes into late summer feeling, and that’s when you can really start to feel the sun setting earlier, a little bit of chill in the night, and really get the feeling that summer is soon going to end.
It goes into the equinox: suddenly we’re on the dark side of the year.
By November, we get into like the really dark and cold feeling, winter is fully set in, and then get into that winter feeling, when everything feels kind of frozen.
And finally, December, Christmas, this feeling of coming home for the year.
There’s a homecoming feeling, and sort of a settling-in feeling, and then it’s the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.
So that’s the cycle of the year as I see it here.
And I also think it’s up to each of us, that we can create our own calendar, because along with all this, there’s all the holidays that are there.
There’s our personal birthdays, our friends and family birthdays, and events that we do every year, and this kind of creates our own personal calendar.
And so I’d be curious to hear from you: what makes up your yearly cycle, your yearly calendar? What’s something else that can be appreciated as part of this cycle? And overall, I just find that by celebrating this year, we can really feel more connected to nature, and really appreciate each of these moments as it comes around.
#rhythmsoftime #wheeloftheseasons #wheeloftheyear