The Softening: Butter Prayers and Battle Cries

Photo by Libby Mundy. All rights reserved.

“This darn butter!” I thought to myself while I was making toast for the kids this week. The butter was being totally uncooperative: hard, chunky, unspreadable. Making holes in the soft toast. Frustrating me because I like my butter soft and smooth, gliding over the toast with one even swipe of the knife (to be honest, I’ll take my butter any which way because, well, it’s BUTTER! And the icing on the cake (or butter on the bread!)? They now say organic, grass-fed butter might even be good for us – HALLELUJAH!!).
Lo and behold, my butter insights are shaping how I have decided to live out this January, as I welcome 2015 with a compassionate and simple (butter) prayer: soft is the way.  Yes. Soft is the way.  Not hard, like mean and unforgiving and resolute but soft like yielding, smooth, quiet, gentle, tender, easy, forgiving, and yes, perhaps even indulgent.
Soft like:

• Don’t measure or time my walk or run, just go do it for the sake of being outside and moving my body. And if Tractor wants to stop and smell the “roses”, don’t rush him for goodness sake!
• Don’t pull away from my husband when I’m angry or frustrated (or feel like punishing him) but be softer and kinder and lean into him instead (hard, I tell you, hard but infinitely more productive . . .).
• It is O.K., and even necessary, to peacefully let go of certain beliefs, past hurts, or people that no longer fill me up and to embrace new friends experiences, and ideas that do.

Yep, this year, I want a different kind of January.  And I’ve decided to take a new tack.  Typically, after all the holiday hoopla and the eating and drinking mayhem that occurs during the six or so weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years, I am ready to batten down the hatches.  To rein myself in.  To regain control of what has often felt like an out-of-control apple cart speeding precariously down a slippery slope to a point of no return.
But then, in the nick of time, before I strapped on my January backpack full of STUFF (shame, guilt, expectations, resolutions), with some hope and a prayer shoved into a fanny pack strapped around my middle, I came across a truffle of an idea that had this at its center:

Maybe you don’t set any resolutions for January 1. Maybe you use January to really dream, consider new possibilities, and then contemplate and thoughtfully plan what you want 2015 to look like. Write your dreams and goals down.  And then proceed - at a manageable pace - no  “ready,set, gunshot/go” required.

I know I was ready for this new idea because it felt as if the angels shone a light down, directly on me, as I sat on my couch on that cold, gray, late-December afternoon, and opened their voices so that they sang directly to the center of my heart. Yes.  This will be a different kind of January. I can make it so. There are no rules here. No unnecessary pressure. January 1 is truly just another day.  Does it have to be D-day, the day a “major operation or event is to begin”? Why no, I don’t think so.

HOW FREEING. HOW LIBERATING. HOW TOTALLY PERFECT.

Unfortunately, we do this all the time.  The routine.  The expected. The “boxing ourselves in”. And then we wonder why we feel stifled or small or bored or stuck. Consider this quote by Eustace Conway of Turtle Island Preserve (http://www.turtleislandpreserve.com/about/eustace):

“Do people live in circles today? No. They live in boxes. They wake up every morning in the box of their bedroom because a box next to them started making beeping noises to tell them it was time to get up. They eat their breakfast out of a box and then they throw that box away into another box. Then they leave the box where the live and get into a box with wheels and drive to work, which is just another big box broken up into lots of little cubicle boxes where a bunch of people spend their days sitting and staring at the computer boxes in front of them. When the day is over, everyone gets into the box with wheels again and goes home to their house boxes and spends the evening staring at the television boxes for entertainment. They get their music from a box, they get their food from a box, they keep their clothes in a box, they live their lives in a box! Does that sound like anyone you know?”                          - as written by Elizabeth Gilbert in The Last American Man

Some boxes are good. Necessary.  Others, not so much. Many of us need boxes. Some of us are just used to the boxes we’ve created.  Or have been given. Or accepted, as is, no questions asked. Perhaps we don’t know how to get out of our boxes, to be different or to try something new. Maybe we’re scared to leave our boxes. Or, we feel small or undeserving of a new box. Or, maybe, the box fits just right?
The good news? Each of us gets to decide how well our boxes fit.  And we also get to decide if we need more circles, more flow, more roundness or softness in our lives. Because we can only take so much sharpness and hard corners and bang-our-head-on-the-wall frustration before we dare to think, “Hmmmm, perhaps I’ve outgrown this box? Or need a new box? Or . . . maybe I should consider a tipi? Or a labyrinth . . . or an open field . . . or a new path . . .”

Photo by Libby Mundy. All rights reserved.

The options are limitless.  But often, a perspective shift is in order.  And sometimes we need to get out of our boxes – and even our own ways - to see what we need. Unfortunately, along with our boxy thinking, we routinely use these little, outdated measuring sticks to assess our progress or our worth: scales, hours worked, money earned, bank balances, square footage, calories in/out, “likes” received . . .
But I’ve got a new measuring stick to try on. It’s called POSSIBILITY.
How big is your soul, your spirit, I ask you? Infinite, right?  Anything can happen if we are open to it. There are a million ways our days can go.  Ask the person who just found out they are expecting a baby. Or who found out a loved one is terminally ill. Or whose kid is the first in the family to go to college. Or who fell in love.  Or got divorced. Or got a puppy. Or bought their first home . . . all of these scenarios hold infinite possibilities within them. Possibilities to grow, love more, be bigger than we’ve ever been.  Go about your day or life differently than you used to.
And you can measure none of these adequately with your checking account, bathroom scale, or friend count on Facebook.
Our lives are full of possibilities.  Each day is a new day. Be it January 1st or January 9th or August 25th. And with each one we can be more of who we are meant to be.  It is this possibility I opening myself to this thoughtful month of January. This January where I am being soft and indulgent and letting go of what doesn’t really give me a true sense of my worth and honing in on more of what does.
In years past, I set my noble, worthwhile, and very measurable resolutions and goals. And if you are seeking to make some concrete changes in your life, measureable is both good and necessary. Nothing wrong with that!  It's our motivation that is key. Is it built on external comparisons or magazine standards or little measuring sticks that just don’t capture all of our inherent beauty and goodness and potential?  Or does it come from deep inside, from a pure, true place within us that reminds us of who we are meant to be and uses that to help us shape the very best version of ourselves?
Sure, I’d venture to say that many of my past goals and resolutions taught me something and for each lesson, I am grateful. Sometimes the lesson was in the process or the striving (or even in the letting go) and sometimes it was simply, thankfully, checking the box of completion. As in, “Hip, Hip, Hooray! Thank God for February 1st!!! Now I can have a glass of wine and a piece of cake and maybe a burger to boot – I might even skip my run!” because . . .  I’m crazy like that. My battle cry? INDULGE AND LET GO!
Yes. Indulge and let go.
Don’t you love it???  Isn’t it SO much better than clamping down, clenching our jaws, and white-knuckling it through January in an Eeyore state of mind? (I don’t know about you but I’m tired of that and besides, it’s really just no fun!!)
So I'm here to offer you this.  We don’t have to go there. We can be kind and gentle with ourselves. We can be soft and easy and forgiving.  And from this place, outside of our small new year’s boxes, we can choose to shape 2015 into something more meaningful and lasting and joyous. But we must step out of our old boxes. Stand up on that box if need be.  Look around. Climb a tree. Look out at our world. Look within. Ask what it is we truly want and need.  Then, pick a new theme song.  Plan a new life. Or just a new day or a new year. Be good to yourself. Dream the possibilities.
Yes, for me this January is full of POSSIBILITIES.  Endless. Big. Beautiful. Gentle, soft, and forgiving. And mine, all mine – for the choosing and for the creating.  And perhaps for the letting go.
What I can really lift a (magnifying) glass to this January is this: illuminating the possibilities in my life, and in others’, so that each of our many gifts, voices, and dreams can be taken out of their boxes, explored, celebrated, seen, heard, and put to good use. Not measured by any outdated rulers but simply shining in the bright light of day, our true worth determined by the JOY we radiate as we soften into becoming more of who we are meant to be.  And also, for the simple joy of being alive.
This January is different and I am glad.
Soft is the way, my friend.
Ready, set . . . indulge and let go!