Rah Goddess' Guide to Life

So I am not as the title of this post suggests, starting anew. Not totally anyway. Well, new years lend themselves to stretching, contemplating and guiding positive thought into some sort of positive action. I said to one of my students today, “come in tomorrow with a new head on". She was very giddy, disruptive and noisy today and I wanted her to realise that her choice was having an effect on the rest of the class. Changing your frame of mind, can be life altering. I have long believed that happiness is a choice, you can choose to see the positive or dwell on the negative in life. Realising that can radically alter how you live.

Attempting to change the way you see life can be the first step in changing your inner “landscape”. Marcel Proust, in one of my absolute favourite quotes, has it right on the money, “The voyage of true discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” I see a rich lush landscape of people and experiences awaiting me in 2010 and am happily setting about my journey. Perhaps this is a rosy clouded perspective but I have been down at heel emotionally speaking for far too long. In embracing a new set of eyes, I am able to take on the challenge of being away from home (it is indeed where the heart is!) for part of the week, starting my career and tackling things, instead of procrastinating.

It is a quasi-rebirth, a new breath and a nervous step in another direction. All the snow we’ve been having a lately felt strangely symbolic of this time in my life. It made me think about the last story in James Joyce’s “Dubliners” - The Dead. A story, I believe, which focuses on shifting perspectives.
“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
This final line makes me envision a man who needs his life to be washed clean as his focus on things around him have sharpened and become more realistic. He feels a link to the falling snow as he needs to start again. I like its link to the old myths of Ancient Greece, particularly of Persephone and Demeter, daughter and mother. Demeter is said to share her daughter with Hades (who stole her from her mother’s side) and her grief at spending only half the year with her daughter is used as an explanation for the changing seasons. Her sorrow becomes the bleak landscape of winter after which comes the joy of sunny days and the return of her daughter. Essentially Persephone is reimagined and reborn every time she comes back. New eyes indeed!

Apologies for my wandering tonight I am just getting warmed up again

xxx