After a long, extremely cold and gloomy winter on the East Coast of America, I woke up this morning hearing birds sing on the tree tops. It’s a sound so familiar, so taken for granted (for a person growing up and living 40 years in the warm Middle Eastern climate).

It has been so long since these heartwarming simple sounds filled the air, I forgot they exist. While walking my dog just around sunrise, I looked up and noticed playful creatures dancing around and felt the joy of life coming back to our small town, to the ground and air, the trees looking lively- ready to burst almost. Some moss here and there shone in luminous green, and a bee flew by when we sat outside later on the reviving grass. 

 

I realized that this shift between seasons took me by surprise, even though it is my 44th spring on this earth (this time around😉). I was so caught up coping with winter, I almost forgot the world would ever change. 

 

How many winters of the soul have you gone through, forgetting there will come a spring? How many beautiful free spirited summers have you celebrated, not being able to imagine yourself diving back deep into loneliness or the painful parts of your being?

 

It seems we get used to almost anything in life, and if we stay there long enough, sometimes we don’t notice that the season changed, or that we ourselves have changed. It is so easy to stay engaged with habits, fears, self-criticism, pain, stories we tell ourselves to explain how we feel. We may at times keep suffering even though we are happy. Or the other way around – keep telling ourselves we are happy and well when we are actually not. 

 

I write these words to myself, and those who wish to hear them, as a reminder, a call for this tender attention inwards. Have you asked yourself today how you are? 

 

Are you struggling with issues that have already resolved and dissolved, but you just haven’t noticed? 

At times we can feel either safer to stay in our familiar old puddle than step into a new land, no matter how good it seems to us. Or we fear losing what we gained, or not trust ourselves or others and prefer to hold on to whatever symbolizes the old and known patterns. 

 

Another perspective could be hanging on to our “happy place”, even though it stopped being happy for us long ago. Hanging on to  our youth, even as we grow older, holding on to people who we have no deep connection with anymore, and so on.

 

Change is a big issue for a lot of people.  

I haven’t even started to talk about us pushing ourselves to change when we are not ready.