Do you Desire? Feel Obliged? Or Just Go With It, to Consciously Create 2017?

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The Buddhist wisdom says let go of all desire until there is no more sorrow (presumably sorrow at not receiving some of your desires). Self development books say get over all guilt motivations, like shoulds, coulds and woulds (I think I must have done this as I don’t even recognize the words any more, was wondering if I’ve spelt them right!). My wise friend who understands human nature says to cultivate patience (I wonder if that is in anticipation of ‘all good things come to those who wait’ or if it is a patience based on a contentment with what you have already, not presupposing a future happening at all?).

My contribution this morning is to remind people about joy and glee and our divine spark. I feel that if we don’t individually choose what we want to do with our lives, someone else will decide for us. That would be worse than desire and obligations put together. This amounts to either force or inevitability! To avoid this, I have a new year’s system to share. Write down ten things you would like to do, great or small. Don’t limit yourself by trying to decide between them or write any of them off as impossible.

Revisit the list often and have a laugh with yourself about it. This is generating some positive emotion in itself, which might turn into motivation towards some action steps or might even miraculously bring about one or two things on the list. It is best to keep this process light, not attach any success, failure or trying even, to this process. The objective is to spend a good stretch of every day smiling and dreaming a better dream than the apparent unfolding of the collective. This injection of imagined possibilities opens up new horizons both personally and for the bigger picture.

To this end, yesterday, I put the telly on…well I put some birdseed out on the picnic table so that the cats, dogs and I could watch our winged friends from inside and the pigs and pony could watch from outside and then I applied to Queens Belfast – a university I went to twenty years ago - to do a post graduate research thesis. I am thinking of qualifying as a serious doctor, a formidable legal advocate, the like of which they call upon in court to give psychological profiles etc. My idea is to focus on food justice. Those God-forsaken countries who’s waters have already risen and are in a climate crisis and who got 5 minutes to talk at the climate summit and the people affected. Also, when that abolition of slavery of animals amendment is ratified in 2020, there will need to be legal guardians who enforce the laws, represent them in court and get the cretters in farms and labs out of harm’s way. I think perhaps I’d like to be ready, to be relentless and a match for any corporate legal team.

Maybe something else will happen, like a group of us get the dog shelter and we focus our work on getting a proper network and national data base going and education….but the key is not to mind. Be up for all of it, any of it and savour the infinite possibilities of our lives, each day, each moment.