Learning From Strivers

Or how to not only make do but go through the next months… well

My mother is always adapting her activities and moods around the weather: Will it rain soon? Is it too hot? Or too cold. Is it dark already? Bedtime. Is the sun up already? Can't stay in bed any longer. But this way of going about the weather hasn't had a positive effect on the quality of her life, in my opinion, but one that is rather limiting. If it’s going to rain some time tomorrow — according to the news — she won’t go out, just in case. It may end up not raining at all, which is usually the case.

I’m saying this because regardless of what I wrote 2 weeks ago — which remains valid and mostly true: the following months of fall and winter will be hard to endure with new or ongoing lockdowns—we should be tuning ourselves to that fact and preparing mentally to strive in that greater-than-normal hardship. The dire combination of facts in front of us, the weather and the lockdowns, should not limit us downrightly.

They do feel the cold outside, and they think twice before going out… but they do because, in the end, they will feel happier. They know it and they force themselves so that they don’t regret it later. ‘Why did I not leave the house earlier?’ That’s what my mother usually thinks when she realizes that it was her house which was freezing, not so much the world outside.

Another thing that makes many people feel depressed during the winter is the lack of light, of sun, the so long dark hours. I have known of people not tolerating this well and truly being clinically affected by this, my daughter for one. But the Scandinavians, again, can teach us some: they make it a goal to look for ways of bringing luminosity into their lives — be it with fires and candles for dinner, or bonfires watching the northern lights with friends by a creek. They purposely look for the light… or create it themselves.

We still don’t know how the pandemic will be behaving in mid-December and we still don’t know either — although we have enough data for informed guesses — how or how fully we’ll be allowed to embrace the holidays. It’ll be the coronavirus, but also the influenza virus. We don’t know if large family gatherings will be permitted, but we should already have a clue: they will not be advisable.

So emotionally speaking, this end of the year will be as atypical and hard as the whole year has been. We have been training for this moment, somehow, though. Maybe this end of the year is our marathon wall, the one I was referring to some months ago.

We can see this year's challenge only as a social demand or a spiritual one as well. It’s both. And both have to be addressed and minded. One without the other being taken care of will leave us crippled — or as we were before the coronavirus, for that matter, not having evolved at all, only survived; these last words are mine, not White Eagle’s.

Interestingly, we will not go through the portal being sad, grim, blue, nervous, pessimistic. On the contrary: it’ll require us to be joyful, content even in the midst of our sorrows and worries, well and strong. Feeling ok feeling happy.

Vibrating well will bring us through. Anyone who has survived tragedies and hardships knows that this is the only way to survive. We have done it before and we have used all of our assets before. So winter will be the next stretch of the test to get through this portal called the 2020 coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic. Not a hole but a portal, shall we?

I recently also wrote about forcing ourselves into our regular end-of-the-year sentiments and states of mind. Anyone who has survived tragedies and hardships also knows that pretending helps. There’s no good coming out of crying constantly and cursing it all — it does help a bit momentarily, oh yes it does, but not constantly, no, because then it would have become a mindset, and believe me, such mindsets pull you away from success.

So let’s pretend that we’re not finishing the year in such an appalling scenario and let’s pretend and trick our minds into a holiday-season mood. Reality won’t have disappeared once the holidays are gone or the winter is… but we will have made it through most of the darkest months in our lives — literally and metaphorically, the darkest.

Pretending doesn’t make us fools or naive. It doesn't fool the outcome automatically, either. But it makes us vibrate according to what we are looking forward to, more in alignment with our goals and aspirations. More in alignment with survival, with success. And that’s what gets us closer, definitely.

Let’s make it a conscious target to not let the cold weather and the darker days control our spirits. Let’s make it a conscious effort to go out and enjoy it. Most of us don’t have the northern lights just out there in our gardens, not even lakes and rivers and mountains to enjoy the winter the Scandinavian way, I know. Come on! I live in Mexico City and hardly anyone has a fireplace here! But we’ll have winter in the northern hemisphere anyway. So let’s embrace it, will you?

I’m not suggesting that we all celebrate Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve with a picnic at our nearest park, no, but only that we go out and take advantage of the outdoors when and as much as is permitted — really hoping the total lockdowns are not back, nor necessary.

Let’s bring light and lights into our lives purposely. Indoors and outdoors, when possible. Keeping lights on and lighting candles can do. Even if we are forced indoors, let’s bring out all of our holidays and winter decorations — clothes, blankets, tablecloths; and spirits. Oh yes, our spirits to vibrate well and strong through this portal.

White Eagle also tells us to enjoy regardless… by singing, dancing, praying, having fun, emanating good things. And guess what? Lighting a fire, she advises.

They must be right.

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