Here we are on the eve of the winter solstice. The shortest day of the year, the longest night. I wrote this month about the slow slide towards this day and the jumble of exhaustion and cheer that rise like waves churning us forward. It is inevitable. This progression of time. I find that I’m already looking ahead to next year and that as I start to plan out my goals and dreams, I feel tired. Torn. Exhausted and energized. I’m searching for reprieve and rest today even as I hold an eye towards the crisp turn of the calendar into another year.
But maybe there’s no need to choose. Here, in this space in between the close of one year and the start of another is a threshold. A space, quite literally, as we stand in this moment of time, on this spinning earth. And an invitation to spaciousness that suspends time. Can we rest here a moment? Can we reflect on all that got us here? Can we trust in the turn of the earth, in good time? Tomorrow can wait.
I confess, twelve months in, it’s hard for me to remember my way back to the last year’s turn. Hard also to discern between the jumble of days, many of which are marked by familiar tides of school and home, meals and play and sleep. The unfamiliar, those days when we ignored routine for the sake of doing something different, memorable for the generous pause of time. It’s frustrating, the overload, and perhaps why people say that the days, the years go so fast.
The earth moves, however, at its same steady pace on its axis round the sun. Well, mostly at the same pace. Astronomers will tell me that because of the earth’s axial tilt, the speed at which the earth turns changes as we orbit the sun. So time changes as we move, and some days do go faster than others. Marked in the progression of the sun through the sky, today is the shortest day with the sun lowest in the northern hemisphere. Tomorrow, it will rise a little higher. Tomorrow our days will begin to stretch out again. Perhaps today’s solstice is a gift: an opportunity to slow with the earth, to pause, and to reflect on all that we have walked through this past year. There is shared ritual here; people across time and around the world have celebrated the winter solstice and the earth’s turn towards longer days. They’ve celebrated the light and what it means to survive, to thrive in another year.
Here, there are glimpses of something else less foreseen than time’s progression and all the more wondrous. For to be here is a choice. Here, in you today, is the accumulation of every day of this past year. How does that sit with you? Notice how you hold that in your body, in your heart. What do you hold onto from this year? What are you content to let go of? What would you like to carry with you into next year? You survived and thrived this year; you fell down and you got back up again; your choices got you to this moment, to the end of another year, and will carry you forward into the next. If we’ll start next year with intentions, let’s close this one with affirmations.
What would you like to affirm for yourself today?
in practice
Take a few moments to write down in a journal your reflections to this essay and the question – what would you like to affirm for yourself today at the close of the year?
Read through your reflection and harvest a few affirmations for yourself, for example – I am here. I survived. I learned from my mistakes. I am deserving of the blessings of this year. I am worthy and beloved.
Write them down in your journal.
Then, sit with them, and when you are ready, repeat them out loud: I am …