The roads were wicked slippery…

January 20, 2014

…But I soared high

Hiiii and Happy New Year everyone! I took a break from WP (and from just about everything else) and enjoyed the holidays… in Canada!

You have heard of Canadian legendary winters of -20, -30, -50˚C and more with the windshield. It’s cold anyways, but they like to add to it, the ‘windshield factor’ I mean (I would giggle every time I heard them say that, or maybe they say ‘windchill’?). We picked a rough time to visit Canada with the extreme cold temperatures and freezing rain. I was hoping to catch up with my dear Canadian blogger friend, Bev (check out her always interesting Ghost Talk blog at http://ghosttalkblog.com/), but we both lost power and heat and got iced in. So our meeting never happened 😦 .

I really enjoyed my holidays in Canada. There’s something to waking up to a common suburban neighborhood transformed into a wintery fairy land following snow and ice storms (which ironically also caused the nightmarish power outages). The trees looked beautiful dressed in the ice coats and, when the sun would peak through, the frozen sidewalk got that almost blinding special glaze. Have you ever tried to jump off ice? And land on your feet (instead of your butt)? It’s a tricky affair! It asks for a little bit of craziness, an adventurous spirit and some courage. Gotta deal with that fear of falling… hard. Your butt hitting the ice: oooouuuch! It’s a risky, challenging, but fun learning experience. With a little bit of practice, and a bruised butt 🙂 , I finally managed to jump high off that slippery base and ground safely… once! But that one time, I was just hanging in the air at the highest point of my jump, and I saw the horizon dissolve magically in front of my eyes. In that moment I knew I wanted more of this high and hang feeling.

Fast forward to New Year’s Eve, the weather improved, the ice started melting and we decided we could attend a fun party at a friend’s house. Every person was supposed to come wearing an original hat and share their one New Year’s resolution on the wall. I came hat-less and resolution-less. If I have read through that party invitation, I would have brought my hat and might have won the most original hat contest that night. But I didn’t. As for the resolution list, I thought I had nothing to share… My resolutions  are never written in words, kept on walls and in to-do-lists. My resolutions are in my visions, my intentions, my experiences and in the feelings associated with the experiences.

I know that in 2014 I will  aim for that high and hang feeling. I can see myself jumping off any surface and soaring high. And when I  am high enough I hang. I pause in silence. No words, no thoughts. Silence. Miracles happen in silence. Some people choose more conventional ways to silence. Not me. I don’t want to sit my way to silence anymore. Some people keep banging their head against the wall until they either drop dead or learn to walk through the wall to the other side. I don’t claim I can walk through walls but I did learn to see through walls, see the other side. And thereafter I stopped banging my head – for the most part (hehe). I may as well find my way to silence by soaring high in 2014. My New Year’s resolution for 2014: Jump, jump, jump my way to silence 🙂 Oh, and yes, start wearing hats more!

p.s.
“Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life.” ~ Terry Orlick, In Pursuit of Excellence