Happy 2019

Happy 2019 Everyone. Although the scientific community will tell you that January 1 is just an arbitrary point in the revolution of the earth around the sun, beginning shortly after the winter solstice, we make it a reference point nonetheless.

Here is a picture I found on Facebook the other day consisting of 48 photos of the sun. They were taken during the year, once a week, in the same place and time. The highest point is the summer solstice and the lowest, the winter solstice.

And so we mark January 1 as a beginning. What does that even mean? Truth be told, every day is a beginning. Every day, every moment, every second. Life is lived in the present. Not in the past or in the future. Inhale. Exhale. That’s it. That’s the present.

There is a type of meditation called “mindfulness meditation.” When done correctly, it’s like seeing the world for the very first time. It’s like you’re a baby eating your very first bite of ice cream—ever. It amazes you. But what you don’t do is think to yourself, “Wow! That’s amazing!” No, a baby doesn’t do that. She can’t. She doesn’t yet have a vocabulary. She just absorbs all the goodness of ice cream. The taste, the texture, the temperature, maybe the headache if she eats too much too quickly. She watches it as she eats, seeing it’s color. She sees its surface begin to shine, and then melt. She watches the puddle of liquid forming at the bottom of the bowl.

That’s mindfulness meditation in its essence. Become totally aware of everything around you, or maybe just focusing on one thing. Don’t try to analyze it, categorize it, or describe it to yourself. In other words, don’t think thoughts. Just be aware.

But let’s get back to the word “beginning.” Anytime you decide to change something in your life, it’s a beginning. It doesn’t have to be something big. Just something that is important to you. And it doesn’t have to start on January 1. It starts whenever you are ready to start. It starts in the present.

Because I am a yoga teacher, I turn to, among other things, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali for advice on living life. Here are what Patanjali calls the “Four right attitudes.”

Friendliness towards the happy
Compassion towards the unhappy
Joy towards the enlightened
Indifference towards the wicked

The word “Sutra” means “thread.” It is a thread of an idea. Each of these attitudes is but a thread of an idea, and could have volumes written about it.

In any case, these are things that are important to me, and things I feel I could do a better job of doing. Maybe I’ll take just one, write it down on a slip of paper, and keep it in my wallet. At the end of each day, I can take it out and think about how I lived my life today. Did I nail the attitude I was working on? Did I fail miserably? What can I do to make it better?

Do you have any changes you wish to make in your life? Please share them in the comments.