Snow Day

When life gives you snow...make a snow angel.

We have a tendency to lament on the "bad" things and overlook or forget about the good.  This morning the snow was falling...again. And while we're all sick of shoveling and bundling up and having our cars washed only for more slush and snow to dirty it right back up, it is what it is.  Our moaning and groaning, our resistance, isn't going to change anything.  The snow will fall and we can choose to be miserable over it or we can turn the day into one of snow angels, sledding, and hot cocoa by the fire.

Last week I led a guided meditation on finding your inner child.  This was during yet another week of consistent snow and frigid temperatures.  At the end of our session, one of the ladies in the group, who lives outside of town on a farm, said she was going home, hooking up a sled to her horse, and going for a sleigh ride through the woods behind her house.  An inspiring way to transform a winter day into a memorable experience.  Today, with that in mind, I bundled up my two year old, dug out my ski clothes, and took her sledding. Each run down the hill we went faster and faster, inevitably falling over and sinking up to our ears into the snow.  I know the wind was blowing, and the snow was falling, and so I imagine I was cold, but all I really remember is the delightful sound of incessant, uncontrollable two-year-old-laughter.  Its that sound that I'll always remember; not the shoveling, the cold, or the slushy mess of winter.

Things happen in our lives everyday, things more significant than the weather, and the labels we place on those events, and how we choose to respond to them, determine how we feel about the way in which they play out.  We have the choice to  complain and resist or to accept.   We can blame others, or external circumstances, in fact, we can blame just about anything we can find.  Yet the fact remains that no one and no thing can make us feel any way unless we let them.  The universe has an uncanny way of laying things out for us exactly as they should be. Knowing this is a comfort. All is well when we allow it to be so.  The universe speaks to us and guides us, and while her voice may often be soft and quiet, when we are open to hearing that voice, we just might realize that whatever events or circumstances enter our lives, it is as Julian Barnes observes in his novel Levels of Life, "just the universe doing its stuff."

Namaste.