Seasonal Mindfulness
Advent is my favorite season. It's usually right around Thanksgiving which for me means food, friends, and family. It's the start of a new year in the Christian liturgical tradition which is a great time to reset and restart. And it's a season of waiting and anticipation, which has become one of my favorite things to feel.
Waiting is hard for a lot of people. Dealing with the pressure and anxiety around waiting can feel overwhelming. Learning how to wait in anticipation as a positive tension is something I see as a core skill for good mental health and well-being.
There are two kinds of waiting in the liturgical tradition. The first is Advent. Waiting in excitement for something good that's just over the horizon. The second is Lent. The other kind of waiting. The kind of sacrifice, of looking honestly at our own faults and flaws. Of knowing there's a hard path coming that also leads to pain and death before the relief of rebirth and renewal.
Waiting is hard because very often, we don't know what to expect. We wait for news— the diagnosis, the test result, he admissions decision. We wait to see the fruits of our labor— the project launched, the baby born, the book published. And there's a moment in waiting where every possibility feels open, where we can see options for success and failure spread out before us.
Honoring times and seasons, whether through a liturgical tradition or something else, helps prepare us for the ups and downs of life. These routines are like training in a safe environment, learning to welcome the times of darkness and times of light, practicing to expand and to contract, accepting both death and new life.
Noticing the seasons is a way to give attention to something outside yourself. Something that might even be incongruent with your internal feelings or situation.
It's the beginning of Advent, a season of joyous anticipation, and that's true whether or not my internal world is particularly joyous. It's also the middle of Autumn, about three weeks and a few days away from the winter solstice. Autumn is about gathering in the harvest, reaping what we've worked hard to cultivate so far this year. And it's the end of November, another month come and gone.
These seasons invite us into the rich harvest, the joyful anticipation, the acknowledgement that the end of the calendar year is near. And regardless of what's going on for me internally or with my life circumstances, I'm invited to step outside of myself and acknowledge something bigger.
It's an offer to participate in joy even when I'm feeling sad, or to celebrate the harvest even when I haven't produced much. I think those moments of incongruity are important opportunities for us. It's so easy to choose to let our moods and circumstances set the tone for everything. If we don't feel like being happy after a breakup, we can cancel on the friends brunch just because it doesn't match the mood. Or we can connect to something larger and feel our own sadness while also entering into the collective joy.
My invitation for you this Advent and this next year is to make a point to connect to that something larger for yourself. Maybe you follow the liturgical calendar, but most likely you don't. And that's okay. This isn't about trying to get you to take on my traditions, but to encourage you to explore your own. Holidays, seasons, months. If you're a student, the academic calendar offers its own cycles. Maybe your chosen career path has rhythms that follow the months and quarters.
Lean into the cycles that are offered to you. Challenge yourself to embody the rhythms and feel the seasons. Notice how the different parts of your life interact— how would it be as an accountant to stay mindful of the new life and growth of spring as well as the busyness and time pressure of tax season? Mindfulness invites us to stay with all of it, here and now in the present. To allow it all: the hope and growth of the calendar season, the need for focus and productivity of the career season, the unique flows in your family unit, and your own emotional experiences.