Lunar New Year. The Year of the Fire Horse. A new chance to begin again.
Also, Lent.
40 days of sacrifice. Giving something up.
As a child, it was candy, and one year, my pillow. Also, sleep, as I walked the dark streets of Levittown at 5:30 AM in my Catholic school uniform to 6 o’clock Mass, then, afterwards, ate something (what did I bring to eat?) in the dark cafeteria in the basement of my school.
Now? Now I still have the desire to give something up, to add a little bit of personal suffering to my day.
Hormesis: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Hormesis: a biological phenomenon where low-dose intermittent exposure to a stressor triggers adaptive, beneficial responses in cells.
Lent is just hormesis dressed in sackcloth and ashes.
We probably need it. There’s a lot we need to adapt to.
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Yoga felt hard to me last night. I wobbled in Crescent Lunge. I didn’t feel strong, stable, or flexible.
I felt the wobbly legs of a newborn Fire Horse.
For the last year, or at least the winter, I’ve been a snake, slithering along the ground. Now, suddenly, I’ve grown legs and must learn to run and carry things on my back.
Another opportunity to begin again.
The days are getting longer. Today, 10 hours and 47 minutes of gray daylight. The hoofbeats of spring can be heard in the distance. The sedentary pace of winter is starting to give way to an urge to get up and move.
But, the fat books still need to be read, and the morning pages still need to be filled with purple ink. There is still a gravitational pull towards the sofa and the comfort of an evening fire and a glass of red.
But…
The walks need to get longer, and the pace needs to be pushed a bit. The heavy things need to be picked up so the muscles will strengthen for the coming days of wielding shovels, pushing barrows, and circling kayak paddles in and out of heavy water.
So…
There are decisions to be made about time.
Time cannot be manufactured or stretched, but time can be conducted, like a maestro conducting an orchestra, so that reading, writing, and exercise can all be played harmoniously within the 14-hour concert of a day.
But first, I must mount the horse and learn to ride again, even if the legs wobble a bit at first.
Giddyup.
Inspiration Location 