This week I had the opportunity to witness winter. Right now I am witnessing the thaw which I am grateful for, but the snow did have its own teachings.
The thing about snow is that it shows your path. Well it shows everybody's path and if the snow lasts for a while it visually depicts our path through time. It was interesting coming across my own prints. I walked a pretty regular route during the frozen week, a slightly shorter walk for our dog. As I came across my own tracks again and again, I thought of how we all move through similar patterns across time. How many times had I walked in this exact same place. Each time I walked I was at a different point in my life's timeline tied together by this path.
January is a month where I sometimes struggle with seasonal depression, but I also mark the new year by seeing how far I've come (or not come) since the last time I trudged through this typically cold and gray month. I tend to move slowly (some might say glacially slow) towards goals. I also don't seem to move in a straight line. There is a lot of retreading the same ground. The snow was quite good at pointing out where I'd been before. In my life I've had the same issues come up repeatedly which also makes me question how much I've really grown and matured.
The snow had one more thing to show me though. Not wishing to mar the pristine surface more than I had to during one peaceful walk with the puppy, I decided to step in my own footprints. This was a much more challenging prospect than I had thought. Even though I was trying to match my own stride consciously, it was near impossible to step into the exact same configuration I'd previously walked. Even when I did step into my own prints it wasn't the same. The pressure would be slightly off on one part of the foot or the other. It soon became clear that I couldn't repeat myself even if I tried. For some reason this gave me comfort. I think it is because I kept seeing the same signposts along my personal journey I got discouraged that nothing had changed. Well it was quite cheering to know that even if I tried to it was not possible to repeat myself exactly. There were always going to be tiny variations in the stream of time.
Why am I telling you this? Well some of you may have vowed that this year was going to be the year that you were going to make sweeping changes in your life. If you are like many others, this is about the time where resolutions lose their steam. I'd say take heart though, things will be different even if just slightly. Each moment is new and unique. That is the secret of time. Each second is a jewel that will never be held again. We often get overwhelmed when we try to account for the larger patterns we wish to contend with in our life's path. What is a path though but a series of footprints? Each moment a new footprint is unique even when it crosses the same landscape. What if we gave ourself the freedom to simply walk our path without judgment? What if we honored the little things we noticed along the way? Try it for a bit and see what comes forward.
Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle
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