Christmas in Reality

December is traditionally a time when people begin to set goals for the coming year.  I've certainly done my share of that over the years.  I used to methodically record everything I did and what I planned to do and where I hoped to be and how much I hoped to have, of whatever.  Some years I made it or got close to the mark (i.e., met my own likely-rigid, high-even-for-me expectations), some years I wasn't in the ballpark.

So much of it is out of our control.  All the material stuff, anyhow.  The only thing we have control over is how we respond to whatever happens.

I don't have goals anymore....of the must-see, need-to, gotta-have variety.   None of it really matters to me one way or the other.  I'm not going out of my way to try to get something or make something happen that isn't destined to be of its own accord.  Because what shows up instead is far better, anyway.  And that's here-and-now reality.  Which is where we actually live.

I've been rereading Jon Kabat-Zinn's Wherever You Go, There You Are.  If you haven't read it, essentially it is a manual of tools for being mindful in your everyday life.   So in light of my thinking about goals and not having them, what Jon writes about non-doing is especially meaningful.  "The only way you can do anything of value is to have the effort come out of non-doing and to let go of caring whether it will be of use or not.  Otherwise, self-involvement and greediness can sneak in and distort your relationship to the work, or the work itself, so that it is off in some way, biased, impure, and ultimately not completely satisfying, even if it is good."

My shortened take on that ~ Follow your heart and see what emerges.