Embracing Winter

When we choose to align ourselves with the seasons, we learn to seek and embrace all that is good about each particular time of year.

Sinking into the season at hand allows us to welcome the particular pleasures that only this season provides. When we're focused on escaping or evading the season, we miss out on the small joys.

How do we align ourselves with the current season? I believe it begins with presence. Before we can find and create everyday beauty, we need to be present with the everyday in the first place. As fabulous as a mid-Winter tropical holiday can be, it's not always an option and even if it is, it only provides a temporary fix. We can choose to be present in the season at hand (which is currently Winter here), to not try to escape it but to instead immerse ourselves in it and find the treasures that it has for us.

If however, we focus on all that we don't like about a season (something many of us are more inclined to do during Winter), we miss the beauty and opportunity that await us.

So, let's embrace Winter. If you find yourself at home more than other times of year, why not learn a new craft or skill or immerse yourself in books that make you want to go to bed early? Cook with seasonal produce, make some mulled wine for the end of a cold day or have a picnic with friends complete with a thermos of something hot.

Winter can traditionally be a time for introspection, for inner work. Take the time to think, to journal, to come out of the darkest season of the year with a little more strength and grace than you had when it began.

And as so often happens.. what we learn from nature, serves us in the course of our lives. What we learn from embracing the different seasons of the year teaches us a lot about living well through the different seasons of our life.

Some seasons of life are easier to love, just like the seasons of the year. But that doesn't mean there aren't joys, wisdom and beauty to be found in each of them.