So how has 2020, the Year of the Pandemic, left you? A gamut of experiences! - some having contracted Covid themselves, some watching loved ones suffer. Others lying awake with financial worry, Some feeling split asunder, caring for children whilst working from home. Some exhausted from frontline work, feeling their humanity sucked from them in the relentlessness of it all. Anxiety, depression, isolation.
There are also those who've enjoyed a break from the daily hamster wheel of doing stuff, and been able to break free for a while from the tenacious habit of keeping busy - given themselves long overdue permission to stop, listen to bird song, to savour good food, play with creative projects, loosen up.
Recently, I've seen the usual clutch of New Year greetings, some of which contained a message of "Shut the Door on 2020", as if we could somehow pretend it never happened. But there's a lot to be processed. Mindfulness teaches us to open up to the aversive, as best we can - including aversive memories or lingering sensations of loss, or residual anxiety.
Some ask - what's the point? Why dwell on horrible things - indeed, why dwell on the past at all? The point is that experiences can leave reverberations, here, now - a foot print, a seemingly indelible mark. While it's true that time alone can sometimes allow such effects to fade away in the busyness of daily life, experience points to a truth that shutting horrible stuff away often means it will pop up somewhere else - another time, another place, or else it will just lurk in the background, silently undermining us . Can we instead allow these feelings some breathing space, with great tenderness? No need to to entertain any thoughts about the events that gave rise to them, but rather, just letting them drift in and out?
Mindfulness encourages us to open up to the whole panorama of what's here, now - whether zooming in on the intricate detail of the breath's movements, the physicality of the heart beating, the tingling in your big toe or the soundscape within or without. Or it may be opening up to what does not lie in our immediate attentional field, but will bubble up if given the time and meditative space. Lurking emotions, a suggestion of sadness, a previously suppressed pain, an unexpected joy or a feeling of comfort in the warmth of your own hands folded in your lap. For me, it is only from this point of knowing what's here, now, that I can make any sense of my life as something other than a bundle of habits and a chain of knee-jerk responses. Only from here can I discern meaningful possibilities.
2021 already promises more Covid challenges. Things have changed again even since I began writing this blog. Where I am, we've moved swifly through the Tiers into complete lockdown, as in all of England. I've caught myself descending into heartsink a little, worrying about loved ones and friends working on the front line..... Time once more to breathe, slow down, savour what's here, notice what nourishes, keep safe - and send out wishes for wellness, ease, and peace to anyone reading this.