Happy New Year, everyOne!

I did this last year, instead of setting goals in the usual way, and found it to be an incredibly powerful practice. Boy, did I open and release last year. All the old, and I mean all of it, is gone, and now, as Fiona Apple sings,

I got my feet on the ground

And I don’t go to sleep to dream

I’m ready for an adventure of a year. I can see the shape of some things in the months ahead, but not others. That’s ok. If I have learnt anything in the last 12 months, it’s that change is omnipresent, and through it all, we sway and survive. And, (gasp) possibly even thrive.

To clear one more thing up, as refers to last year’s post: I am still not ‘doing’ any meditation. Instead, I follow Mark’s advice, and do my asana as my primary spiritual practice. Out of that seamless fusion of body breath and bandha arises stillness, as a gift. Call it meditation if you will.

Now, back to the scheduled programming: my words for 2010.

Here they are:

picture by treehugger*

I like Dictionary.com’s definition of hope as:

to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence.

to believe, desire or trust

Hope is, I think, and have probably said before, an essential ingredient for living. Nobody ever has a perfect life, but if you can master the subtle alchemy of being happy with the status quo, and at the same time holding hope that the future will be better, you are going to be, predictably enough, happy and hopeful. An optimist. A Pollyanna. I get accused of this quite a lot, because I always always choose to believe that people do the best they can. People (the vast majority) don’t go around intending to hurt each other. Some do, and they need to be dealt with, but the rest of us, we are just doing the best we can.

So I have that part of hope down, but the last year has somewhat dented the faith/trust aspect of hope in my psyche. A friend was teasing me the other day: she said I ought to re-incarnate as a hedgehog, so I would be cute, but able to curl into a small prickly ball at the first sign of threat. The threat in the this case was intimate relationship. To be honest, peeps, it scares the daylights out of me to contemplate getting into a relationship again. Even the word makes me break out in a cold sweat. This, of course, is why my experiment in dating land Did Not Go Well.

I choose to have hope again.

Which brings us to word number two:

picture by the bubblybeginner

In order to rebuild hope, I need to be brave enough to step into the air and believe that the ground will come up to meet me. Kind people tell me I’m courageous, but I know I could be much braver. There are so many things I should be doing that I’m not, because I am scared.

To quote myself:

Fear holds us back from the things we could be doing, feeling, experiencing. Feel the fear, and do it anyway

I just love the etymology of courage. It comes from the word corage, which means ‘of the heart’.

So, this year, I will open my heart to taking risks. I will do things even when they scare me, especially when they scare me. I will dream big, and act on those dreams. I will be courageous. Brave-hearted.

More song lyrics to illustrate my point, this time from Emiliana Torrini (I heart her):

Oh make some big jumps, big jumps

You’re afraid to break some bones

Come on make some big jumps, big jumps

Life is yours alone

You hold your head up, your head up high

Like you think I do

Will you join me? Let’s link hands, roar lion-hearted, and leap into the air. Who knows, we might keep soaring.

Related articles:

• The Two Words Project: March Reflections
• Holes in the sidewalks & faceless pursuers
• Two Words review: Commitment & Flexibility