"The little winters of life"

early morning bird, September

“If, when you look clearly at the situation, you seem to be making the right moves and the world isn’t responding, it may be time to take the desperation out of your voice and eyes and respond to the deeper rhythm of events. You may have entered a period of winter. Winter isn’t terminal, it isn’t death. It’s simply time to hibernate, to turn your energy inward and do your growing underground.

Westernized culture doesn’t support hibernation. People lead global 24-hour lives where nothing ever sleeps. TV, radio, news, transport, light, heat, internet all keep going like a funfair. Nothing switches off any more and life is full on, or seems to be, so when it goes quiet for us it seems like a violation of the natural order, but it isn’t.

[...] ‘To everything there is a season’. [...] If you look closely at your own life you can see it too. The rhythm changes. Sometimes things flourish, events pile up. Sometimes life feels as though it’s gone into slow motion, even stopped.

I’ve found that the way to survive the little winters of life is to keep working but to reduce your activity and greatly reduce your expectations. At times like these it never works to force anything. When the sea is rough, mend your sails.   

[...]These are times for editing your possessions, harvesting your resources, evaluating your progress, learning new skills, cultivating friendships, catching up on reading or sleep, caring for your body, going within and reconnecting with your dreams. There may be lessons to be learned and now you have the time to learn them. Your maps may need to be redrawn and now you have the time to redraw them, knowing all the time that the season and the energy will shift. “

(from "When the Sea is Rough, Mend your Sails", a chapter in Lesley Garner's Everything I've Ever Done That Worked)

This summer was my winter, and it continues, even though I am slowly coming out of it - just when the actual winter is drawing close. A friend did a Tarot reading for me yesterday. It was precisely about the above, about going with the flow, having no expectations, no goals, and just being in the moment and looking after myself. I have exhausted myself wanting things to be different in a certain area of my life, and with work I am trying to get things done, which at times can feel like forcing them, but I am able to prioritise and realise that nothing is that important, and I have days when I am in the flow and everything seems to make sense.