New Beginnings

Spring is a time of awakening and refreshing. The cycle of life starts once again. In my mind of pattern watching, I tend to feel the monotony of the pattern at its base level, but without a doubt, I enjoy what each cycle has to offer. In my curious place, I start to ask questions about myself and my surroundings. Is each pattern the same? Should each pattern be the same? The answers to both those questions are no. In my journey of self-discovery, I ask similar questions. Somehow, I have missed the fact that a new start is not the same as starting over. I imagine some of my inability to delineate is the fact that I spent my childhood being uprooted and hauled off to unfamiliar places at least once a year. The only stability I could find was in the pattern of instability. A new place did not mean new behavior.

Starting over speaks to me of wadding up a failed art project and getting a new piece of paper to try and make the same thing, but satisfactorily. A new start seems to say that I am not trying to make the same thing as before, that I am making a whole new project. Yes! That's me! I am not trying to patch up my former self; I am releasing the true me, and that requires new tactics. Different habits need to be developed to nurture and guide the vision of who I am. One habit I am trying to abolish is apologizing for existing. I usually preface requests with an apology for being inconvenient. One situation at a time, I am choosing to simply have needs and communicate them without apology. Another way I am honoring myself is by learning how to protect my empathy. I carry around so much weight from other people that is not mine to carry. My latest mode of functionality is to go ahead and interact with all the kindness in my heart, but then place the residual energy in a mental box and shelve it in the "not my responsibility" section of my mind.

Each time I choose one of these new techniques, I start a whole new pattern. It is no longer, then, a do-over; it is an entirely fresh adventure. Just as the seasons of nature use the same base pattern of refresh, flourish, slow down, and sleep, I will use the same patterns I have always used to discover a solution. Identify, realize, research, and make a plan. The secondary layer is what changes. As the first year growth is different from the second year growth for nature, so my second layer is a change from allowing others in to allowing myself out. Spring reminds us that every new beginning is an opportunity to grow. Let the beauty unfurl and lean into the sun.