Happy New Moment

We can begin again at every moment. No matter where we are, what we’ve done, said, thought, or felt.

There’s no effort required. There’s no script for change, either in thought or behaviour. No contracts with the self, other people, the universe, nature, or with God.

It’s like taking a breath. You can’t really control it. If you try, it will eventually control you because you can’t live without it.

That fresh taking in of a new moment and the letting out of the one just past happens without you even realizing it. It just comes, without asking, without judgement, without doubt or regret. Without clinging or resistance. It comes whether you want it to or not.

That’s breathing. That’s changing. That’s living. That’s being.

What are you? What do you want to be? You’re already there. There is nowhere at which you can arrive to be someone you aren’t already.

It’s all right here, and it’s going to change again in the next moment. Make all your movements and small noises and resolutions. Touch things to put your mark upon the world. But this moment is not you, it’s not me, it’s not any of us. It’s just the way being alive goes.

Anything that comes up is a chance to start again.

Every fall. Every crash. Every tumble to the ground, awash with sorrow, writhing in pain, shaking with rage, still with apathy, stone silent with loss. Every fresh breath is a chance to see, to accept, to let go, to dissolve, to renew. We don’t have to plan it for next week or next year. It’s all happening right now.

You don’t have to change it, push it away, dispel it. It’s not something to seize––carpe diem, seize the day!––No. Let be the day. Just notice it.

Notice the space you’re in. Notice what you do. How you lift your hand to touch a door, your child’s head, your lover’s face. To fold your laundry and brush your teeth. To receive and experience the world.

Notice how that same hand clenches to a fist, folds in prayer, simply rests. All the different things we do and the meaninglessness of all of it.

Oh but the ego’s giant purpose!

Notice all those thoughts and feelings that make up your inner experience, that construct your little stories that tell you how the world goes.

Notice the tingling, the tightness, the pressure, the release. Notice the feeling of your feet connecting with the ground in each step. Notice all the faces you pass, the ones that pause for a moment in your field of vision and the energy felt there.

It’s all just energy in different forms. People doing people things. Voices of different qualities. A variety of movements in space. Different shapes and colours, scents, sounds, and sensations.

How incredible it is to experience this depth and simplicity of life, the charge of motion, the beauty of stillness. How fortunate to witness each new sound, thought, and sensation.

To be in the presence of absence. The fullness of insignificance. The entirety of emptiness. To experience nothing and everything all at once.

What a privilege we’re afforded to accept, love, hold, and let go.

To start all over again and again, with each new breath.