By all accounts, the world kept turning for one more year.
The dark clouds at dawn grow slowly illuminated as the secondhand tick along our analog clock. The cars race down the road, the noise of their engines cut through by the sound of water as they pass through puddles on our soggy corner.
The world outside seems bleaker than it did a year ago.
In the slow movement and growth of my third trimester, I oscillate between reading the news daily, commenting in abundance on social media, and realizing how happier I am when I withdraw from both.
We send money and pray for victims of natural disasters, but our efficacy in the world of Washington, Ukraine, Hong Kong, Nigeria, seems small. What can I do as those around me continue to receive dismal diagnoses? Is any change possible as I observe the tents moving from place to place across the bigger cities that surround us?
My generation was raised to believe we could be anything, do anything, we could change the world.
In the dawn of new millennia, John Paul II preached from Denver, Paris, and Rome telling the youth of the world to put out into the deep and be not afraid.
Our sights turned across the world and Mother Teresa said it starts at home, in our own living room, and to change the world drop by drop.
The goals still matter. Have in mind a vision of what you would like to achieve. Consider the short-term goals necessary to get there.
Allow these plans to hover over the thing that matters most now: the present moment.
Adjusting to, accepting, embracing and utilizing the present moment in its unpredictability, chaos and otherness take primacy over the other things. It is in the present moment that what we can do to make a change takes effect.
Virtue is the habit of practicing the good, the things that makes more human, less-animal like. It is the moment I choose not to snap at those around me when my work is interrupted.
The moments add up
but like the tasks of gardening, it takes a long time before we can see the fruit. Little shoots sprout up, but it is the photograph after multiple springs that show us how things have changed with all this practice.
At home, we hold a winter and spring recital. The children showcase their accomplishments for the year to the delight of family and friends.
In my heart, I consider what reflection to make this New Year.
Should I bother setting a resolution when the only thing I know for sure is that things will change? When so much uncertainly lies around the corner, the best resolution may be the smallest one. We shall plant a fruit tree, one that was gifted to me and grows surprisingly well in its little pot. We will transplant it to the garden bed outside my window. Perhaps in its next bloom, we will smell the delicate, sweet scent of lemon blossoms wafting through the window. Maybe we will add two more that could use a dose more TLC than they receive in their present location.
For my children, I resolve to seek more slow moments, moments of being, moments of conversation. Those conversations are rarely spontaneous. I must be engaged and willing to ask a question and listen for the answer.
My youngest reached our greatest goal and hope for the year, one we especially had no control over. All of 2019 passed without hospital admission. We once thought things would never change. Yet they do. They always change.
The sun is up but we cannot see it through these rainy days of winter.
It lingers there, quietly illuminating the world around us, faithful enough for those who choose to remember, offering from time to time a rainbow. The rainy season is a great time to pull weeds from the garden, my mother taught me. And when the days look bleak, we can still sew seeds of hope and change in the world around us bit by bit, moment by moment.
