A new season arrives… and with it comes new opportunities for embarking on, or continuing, the lifelong task of improving ourselves. Spring is the season of rebirth and renewal. It is a time when we notice all around us the signs of new life coming into being, and the resurrection of many things that became dormant during Winter. We experience a rush of exuberance with the coming of a season of growth, as it calls us to rid ourselves of the heavy coats and other encumbrances connected to a season of retreating from the cold. The energizing of the new season motivates us to open ourselves to the joys of a more abundant life, symbolized everywhere around us in the blossoming that even now is taking place. For many this is a season to embrace and celebrate all the things that sweeten life. It is a time for the carnivals that highlight and promote the erotica of our existence. Winter has thankfully said its goodbye… and we gladly bid it “Adieu!” in anticipation of the opportunities to embrace and celebrate the coming forth of our season of mirth.
Put away the heavy coats…
In the real world in which we live it gets very cold sometimes. Not just in winter, but in the many and varied times and spaces of our numerous relationships. For our own protection, and to maintain our good health, it becomes necessary to cultivate spaces of warmth and comfort for ourselves; and to dress our souls in the kind of physical, emotional, spiritual, and cultural attire that protects us from the pervasive risks of our challenging life environment. “Coming in from the cold” is not just something we do in the chronological period between Fall and Spring; it should be, and becomes a part of protecting ourselves from the debilitating chill of those kairotic interludes in our day to day life experiences. Indeed there are times in our politics, in our culture, in our families, in our intimacies, in the many and varied circumstances that make up the totality of our existence when we are forced to recognize and deal with the real discomforts of being in this world.
But we can’t live with any real sense of joy in a perpetually clothed, or an unrelenting threat-prevention mode. There comes a time when to truly live we must unfold our arms, disrobe, and let our guard down. This is not to temporarily or otherwise deny the real threats around us as evolving persons in an ever-evolving environment. Those threats always exist. Despite them however, we must eventually let our guard down in recognition of the fact that to survive and fulfill our sacred obligation to multiply ourselves in all the essential ways, we have to at some point make ourselves available to being embraced …and to be embracers of others.
To truly live it is necessary to engage with passion in that bountifulness of being that affirms our true humanity. This is what allows us to be prolific in accordance with those creative expectations that make our hearts race and that enliven minds. Our heavy coats and other protective gear get in the way of that vitally creative process. And so, as with the coming of Spring with its potential for birth and rebirth and renewal, we must shed the obstructive camouflages that keep us isolated, and that stunt the possibilities for growth and its consequential fruitfulness. This new season beckons us to live into the blossoming that portends that fruitfulness. We accommodate that beckoning by opening our minds and hearts and our very being to the possibilities of both a chronological and a kairotic season of abundance.
Embrace and celebrate the things that sweeten life…
That moment arrives, and is now, when we should emerge from the weighty grayness of a dormant existence into the sun-enhanced new season of growth possibilities. The feel of its glow on our uncoated bodies, our unencumbered minds, and our ever-expanding spirits, is exhilarating. The refreshing breeze of its empowerment joins forces with our breaths, and our first instinct is to inhale as deeply as we can in order to affirm and hold on to the qualitative difference of this abundant moment… this new season with its many blossoms and seeds… it’s proliferation of possibilities. And so we savor that deep breath. We close our eyes to every imposed or imagined reservation, and we savor the wonderful expectancy of our blossoming abundance.
The vernal moment is upon us in all its enlivening splendor. We welcome its coming with our every breath. We celebrate the possibilities for renewal and re-engagement that had gone dormant in the cold season of our superficially and otherwise burdened lives. We look forward now to the effervescence of blooming possibilities with renewed zest. It is time again to reset our tables… to decorate them with sweet smelling flowers, and the wonderfully enticing spread of the best that Life has to offer. We prepare a feast for our palates, indeed for all our senses, that is commensurate with the best expectations of our appetite for truly living. And as we take our place at this delightful table, in our palms we gently grasp and warm the tumblers that hold the new wine of an enriched life, enhancing its bouquet.
We smile invitingly at strangers. We open our lives’ doors to the season of growth and change. We prepare appropriately, and we engage with others in a feast celebrating the invigoration of an existence now shared… and so sweet. We laugh. We dance. We sing. We affirm together the truth that “… with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.” And somewhere in a distant thought we acknowledge the persistent challenges that we have faced… and will face… as facts of our lives… courses to be endured… difficulties to be overcome. Yes they are. We refuse to allow them to prevent us from living into the real possibilities that encourage us to be more than just unwitting victims of our fragile idiosyncrasies. And with that in mind we necessarily silence the voices around us, both the artificial ones on our radios and televisions and those from the people immediately around that incessantly bombard us with their scenarios of gloom and doom.
We determine that we will sharpen our senses and regain our attention… That we will set our own existential agendas. We agree that we are better off together, and so we will refuse to cultivate the sense of otherness that is constantly being foisted upon us. We reject the attempts to engender the kind of insecurities about each other that allow for the marketing of the puffed up coats and straight jackets that encumber and confine us. We will no longer treat the masks of our discomforts as if they were our true faces. We will not buy into the vapid nonsense that ultra-sensitizes us to our own innate fears and the biases that drive them. The superimposed heavy jackets from the “winter of our discontent” are nothing more than the props that aid us in eliminating the joys that are discoverable when we are truly and essentially together.
Bid “Adieu” to the state of dormancy…
And so now we bid goodbye to the cold days of cultural and spiritual dissonance. Goodbye to the alienation that results when we fold our arms and hold our heads down as a function of the downsizing of our world and our possibilities. Say goodbye to the season of dormancy that comes when we surrender to the regressive convenience of growth stunted and or differed. We embrace the season of new possibilities. We bask in the reassuring glow of a surging existential fecundity. Let us together take a brisk walk into the growth oriented radiance of personal and communal inclusivity that leads us to a needed expansion of our livity. In the words of the Rastaman… “Live up!”. Challenge your heart to achieve new levels of functionality. Become more… Unlimit your expectations. Set out to, and create with your very life… An ode to Spring.
One Love!
Roy Alexander Graham. President/ CEO FIGTREE ENTERPRISES, INC. Copyright 2015 Figtree Enterprises, Inc.
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