The winter landscape is somber, many colors are absent, yet life is teeming on the inside. The trees bare trunks and bone dry branches, empty of leaves. Nature sheds the excess to protect the strength and tender warmth of life, within. We human beings are not naturally equipped like the trees, to protect life. We have to work harder, to decipher Winter’s gift.
Winter is here to nudge us to prioritize, to shed the excess we
collected through summer and fall. The cold keeps us indoors, and this confinement, can propel reflection. A deeper process of ruminating and nourishing priorities. Refresh your Life-List in a playful way. Add in the people, relationships, food, activities, projects and passions that truly warm your heart and soul. Share it with a soul mate, your best friend, your favorite relative or yourself. Use ink, charcoal, paint, stickers, symbols and flourishes if necessary, to let the list glow. Discuss the emotions, the feelings and the thoughts that come to you, when you reflect on each item of your list. Highlight those items that seem self- effulgent with the light of better feeling and thoughts. The ones that clearly show potential, those that ring true.
Despite the harsh weather, find ways to give life to your list. If it is a friendship you listed, give it more time, brave the weather and meet up, give the relationship more of yourself and learn new dimensions of the person you cherish. Initiate those prized projects with extra work, savor how the experience kindles warm flames of good feeling and constructive thoughts. Organize late afternoon teas or coffee outings, and have in depth discussions on issues that concern you, or the world or the people you share. In short, honor the items on your list, with renewed attention and creativity.
Your Life List, if rejuvenated in winter, generates within a thrumming stream of emotional energy and nurturing thoughts, gifted with many extra ounces of grit and resilience. These vivid new seeds of life within you, will shape the new opportunities, waiting for you in the climes of Spring.