Happy New Year Moments in 2022 – A Personal Reflection
I wake up and spend the first fifteen minutes each day sitting in silence. These early minutes of my day give me a chance to frame my attitude by anchoring myself in gratitude.
I can choose to see the world and my life bound by challenges and difficulties – or I can see the moments of each day as gifts, waiting to be savored or served.
Silence is a spectacular gift you can give to yourself, daily.
The gift of silence allows me to begin each day in appreciation, not anxiousness. I commit to noticing and being present for the littlest thing – not the big scary stuff. I’ll hear the subtlest clicks and clacks of my refrigerator’s compressor – or the subtle swoosh of wind outside the window. The persistent patient purr of Shazmina, our tortie Persian feline whose presence calms me as she awaits her food.
Silence forces me to pause – to be quiet enough to hear the simple sounds from my surroundings and heart. I feel the visceral love for those who are my family and friends. I chuckle at something as lovely as a video, playing in my mind, of my 3-year old grandson Bodhi playing with his toy yellow airplane that takes off and lands on his bedroom floor. We both love yellow – it is our favorite color.
This Morning
Today is the last day of 2021. I don’t think good riddance. I think – thank you for all the silent moments I got to spend noticing, sharing, and feeling.
Today, December 31, 2021, I began my silent meditation on my green chair in my living room. I like that name for this room – because it’s hopeful and alive.
After my coffee, I read online about the death of a young man whose father I met many years ago. He ran a much-heralded advertising agency in North Carolina. I didn’t know his son – but always admired his dad from afar. A creative spirit that struck me as gentle. Warm and kind.
My heart broke reading the tragic story of his son’s untimely passing in a car accident. A life cut short in its prime is so unfair. All I could feel was the depth of sorrow as I slowly drank my dark roasted coffee.
And I wondered how anyone gets out of bed the next day and keeps going after such heartbreak. How do those moments happen – its inexplicable.
This Moment
I’m not a resolutions kind of guy – I don’t need the turning of the calendar to make me as present as I can – at this moment, at this exact time. No lists of dos and don’t for 2022 make sense. I try hard to live each day as I want my life to be – so every morning is a bit of a reset or reboot of me.
When the glass is half empty, I am aware that my heart aches in sorrow. All I see and feel are the downsides of things.
But when that same glass is half full, the world and even my breathing are a gift and a bit of wonderment. I breathe in and out – sucking in the air of gratitude that surrounds me.
Through my reboot, I try to slow down and taste the subtlest flavors and smell the aromas that swirl in the air during a walk outside.
This Battery
I had to run a few errands this morning. Upon leaving the garage, the battery on the remote for the garage door didn’t work.
My mind started to race because I quickly jumped to the conclusion that the old device was broken, and I would need to get a service person to come out and possibly replace the garage door mechanism. My mind leaped to the worst case, and it was like a train that was off the tracks.
While on my errand run, I entered the pharmacy to pick up some things my wife needed; I saw they had one 9V battery left. I bought it thinking – I hope this works. Maybe it is as simple as the need to replace the battery.
When I opened the device up, there was a crusty, old Radio Shack battery inside. I think Radio Shack filed chapter 11 in 2015 almost six years before the word Covid was in our daily vocabulary.
I switched the battery out, and voila. It worked.
The lesson – silence is a beautiful and invaluable way to start the day. Often, we need to recharge our batteries, and silence, meditation, or prayer can serve that role and give us the energy we need.
Pick whatever works for you but give the sound of silence a chance.
We carry around old batteries from long ago that lack the energy to move us forward. Those old batteries were drained, they no longer have any power.
Moments of silence recharge our souls and give us the strength to open new moments.
I guess it is true. When one garage door closes, another opens anew.
Wishing you a happy silent new year in 2022.
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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
