The sun would be out in the morning, they said, but clouds would return later. I headed out. I had errands to run, but first I would indulge in a drive down country roads to see the woods and the farmlands and barns in this January sun’s rare light. I’d take a Sunday drive.
Six miles down the road, a turn to the west revealed the immense cloud bank rising from the southwest. I turned south to meet the highway again and make my stops.
The cloud bank flew above me to my destination and when I parked I was beneath its head, broad and wide, its wake of plump white rows quilting the sky, as pale ribbons of lavender gray lay strewn
in spaced arches across them. It raced over the sky, its stretched arms reaching both the north and south horizons.
In a trance of amazement, I walked toward the store, looking at my fellow shoppers to see if they, too, were as stunned by the sight as I. But their faces were blank and grim against the cold, and not one of them saw that they walked beneath a great wonder.
I have two bulletin boards above the desk here in my office. Over the passing months, they have become cluttered with notes and reminders and photos to the point that they’re screaming at me to DO SOMETHING! It sort of feels like it does when you realize that you really, really need a haircut.
So I added “Re-do bulletin boards” to my Do/Projects list. Meanwhile, I’ve been looking at what’s there now, mining for the gems in the clutter. One of the notes I noticed this week was a list of “The Nine Choices for Happiness,” which are the chapter titles of the book How We Choose to Be Happy. The first one on the list is “Intention.”
Because it’s the first week of the New Year, I thought about all the resolutions that people made at the year’s dawning. A resolution, I thought, is the same as an intention, except you declare it more forcefully, maybe stomping your foot or clenching your hands into fists as you say it.
Either way, I hear that most of them “don’t work.” And I’ve noticed that fewer and fewer of us even bother making them any more, as if turning over a new leaf is an outmoded fashion. It’s not. And I feel kind of sorry for all those discarded resolutions. Somehow we bought in to a belief that making one was like waving a magic wand; it would instantly empower you to move in a whole new direction in your life. Nope. That’s not the way it works. The intention doesn’t make things change; it nudges you to do it.
We also mistakenly think that intentions will kick in automatically the moment we create them for ourselves. But things only become automatic when we repeat them over and over until we do them with hardly a thought. An intention could only be automatic if we were already doing what it asks, and of course we aren’t. We just want to. In fact, We want to so much that we intend to. Beginning now. And intending is an excellent beginning.
It’s a tricky one, though. We declare our intention with so much fervor that we’re sure it will leap forward, grab our attention, and ignite our will power at every fork in the road. And then the doggone thing floats out of sight like a wisp in the wind and doesn’t drift around again for a while. We put a lot of hope in that intention, and a lot of good it did us, we say when we remember it. That’s the tricky part. We can make up all kinds of excuses for not reaching out to pull that intention back to us again. We guess we weren’t meant to succeed. We guess intentions don’t work. We forget why we wanted that in the first place. We decide it doesn’t matter.
That’s the kind of thinking that gave rise to the old expression that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Hell is exactly where defeatism takes us.
But imagine you’re outdoors on a lovely, sunny day when you spot a little feather floating by, right at eye level. It looks so bright and appealing. Imagine that you reach out and gently cup it in your hand and draw it toward you where you can get a good look at it. That’s what you need to do with good intentions that drifted away.
Now that it has your attention again, let it tell you about the possibilities it carries for you and about how relieved and alive you’ll feel if you let it guide you. Then figure out a way to keep it around where it can smile its encouragement to you on a regular basis. Write it on notes, or on your calendar. Name a pebble after it and carry it in your pocket. Find a wallpaper to represent it on your phone.
Suppose you actually do that. You pick something that you want to do, to make a part of your usual way of being, something that you imagine will make you feel more alive, more purposeful, more at peace. You invent a reminder of some kind to keep your intention top of mind. Then what?
Well, for one thing, your intention will begin to guide your choices. It will sit right up there on your shoulder with your good angel and whisper in your ear with reminders. And that’s a lot. Even if you don’t follow its guidance, it will have called your attention to the fact that you have a choice.
You can give your intention more power by taking time to daydream about it now and then. You can nurture it by asking yourself affirmative questions about it, such as “Why am I seeing so many ways that I can be more . . . ?” or “Why is it getting easier to . . . now?” Just ask yourself the question from time to time and see what answers float up from your mind.
I’m going to keep that list of choices for happiness on my bulletin board when I redo it. And I’m going to post a word or two there to remind me of my intentions for the coming year. They inspire me. And what better way to begin a new year than to feel inspired!
Wishing you delightful, focused, good intentions, and an inspired New Year!
Look how the weeds lay here, bent, leaning, and yet catching the light just so. Such haphazard beauty, unintended, yet inevitable, I suppose, an expression of its nature, a variant of its song. And look how it’s hidden, right here in plain sight. You could walk by and think it was no more than a tumble of weeds. But perhaps it’s a gift, waiting for an artist’s eye to see in it a golden boat on a frothy sea.
More rain is in the forecast, maybe mixed with a bit of snow. Even now the clouds have gathered in the western sky. The sleeping fields dream beneath puddles and frost, oblivious of the weather. But we, who have gone long days without a glimpse of sun, danced today under great swaths of blue sky, counting it as a gift and a blessing.
Like birds, or notes on an invisible staff, a small choir of leaves adorns the maple’s branches. A mere glance in their direction is enough to set their song singing in my mind, and I recall a story about a man who played the piano, and his wife, who played the violin. The two of them entertained by playing the music they saw in any painting that their host would present, one neither had seen before. Now, decades later, as this filigree of leaves and twigs sways in the wintry sky, I finally understand.
It’s all a matter of perspective. Which way is up, which down. What’s in focus, what’s not. This slant or that. Which view is true, which distorted. Who decides who decides, and by what measure. The raindrops fall, their dreams of the world melting into a stream that feeds the roots of trees, who, no doubt, have dreams of their own.
I step into the woods knowing only that its lessons wait, hidden in plain sight for me to see. Whether I will or not depends, I have learned, on how willing I am to surrender my preconceived notions and dreams, to be open and willing to receive what’s before me, naming nothing, judging nothing, wanting nothing but to follow the gladness spilling from my heart.
Except for the strength of it, I suppose you could call it an impulse, this sudden sense that I must go now and walk among trees. Given the gloom of the day and the late afternoon hour, this tug surprised me. But here I was, pulling on my boots, grabbing my gloves, detecting a sense of purpose, a need to waste no time. Then I am plowing through a carpet of oak leaves, transfixed by the way the light shimmers through the cold, barely visible mist, intensifying somehow the textures of the skins of the trees, of the earth and the ice-glazed lake, how it amplifies their winter hues. This was my wordless lesson, this offering of beauty, a gift of love to celebrate this new year’s very first day.
Well, first and foremost, let’s share a New Year’s toast: “May this brand new year be the best one yet, for each and every one of us!” Happy New Year to you, from my heart.
I got a wonderful present this week from a Facebook friend, Nanda Jurela, who shares her insightful wisdom on her blog. The gift was what she called an “enlightening motto” that she had heard a few years ago. It says, “You can’t embrace what is trying to hug you while holding onto yesterday’s junk.”
I’m adopting that one myself, thank you, Nanda.
Imagine waking up every day of the new year wondering what hugs will come hoping for your embrace! They could come dressed up as anything. They could be any color, or shape, or size. The only thing they all have in common is that they’re filled with goodness and a very particular fondness for you.
Personally, I’m going to make a mini-poster to hang on my bedroom wall where I’ll see it as I step out into the day: “You can’t embrace what is trying to hug you while holding onto yesterday’s junk.” I suspect its junk is all that stands between us and genuine joy. I’ll remind myself, too, that even one minute ago can be “so yesterday.”
I’ll be sharing my thoughts about “genuine joy” over the coming weeks, and about things that serve to invite more of it into our lives. What better way to begin than to practice noticing life’s little reminders that it’s on your side and just waiting for you to take its assurance that you are so dearly loved–even when you’re a mess!
The hugs are always there, you know. Go around expecting them to pop into your world at any moment. Chances are, if you think about them during the day it’s because one is trying to get your attention. And all you have to do to grab it is to let go of yesterday’s junk!
It might come as a thought, as a hope, as a new possibility. It might fall across your path as something you hear or read or see in the sky. It might come as a silver lining. A person could bring it, or the mail, or an elephant. Hugs can wear any costume you can imagine, and a bunch of them that you can’t. But every hug life gives you—never, ever forget—comes especially for you and is exactly what you need. So do remember to say thanks. Then be on the lookout for the next one. And the next. And the next.
May you go through the year with open eyes. empty arms, and a peaceful heart.
