Here we are in 2020.
It's been an amazing decade for me not only in career terms, but also in terms of self-understanding and compassion for the human condition. When I think back to the last decade, it was actually very much in alignment with how most cultures think of the 30s - as a time to reflect and process the experiences that transpired in decades prior. And I dove into it passionately and compulsively with the aid of self-help resources, spiritual teachings, and meditation/yoga practices.
I had this overwhelming need to answer this question: why do circumstances and experiences come round and around? I see cycles with variations on the same theme repeat for me and others, and I see what happened for others also happen for me. To put it in simple experiential terms:
Happiness rise. Happiness fall.
Anger rise. Anger fall.
Sadness rise. Sadness fall.
Love rise. Love fall.
Good times rise. Good times fall.
Thoughts rise. Thoughts fall.
Who among us are not in the same boat? Throw in some terms of virtue and sin and we are Shakespeare on repeat.
I have no solution to the endless nature of these cycles, but here's my observation thus far. Whatever that I can think up with my mind can be validated and refuted at the same time. And they would be both right and wrong at the same time. So there is no answer, or at least not one that can be uttered. I can only follow the finger of the yoga master into nothingness and toward Truth that is impossible for the mind to grasp.
Or perhaps, the change we seek lies in the rise in consciousness and a shift in the quality with which we experience the world. As I begin this new decade, my new hope is of living more in the second half of "Groundhog Day," and in cherishing moments in new ways that were never thought of before. Hello to the arrival of the Aquarian age and the many inspirations that it's already bringing to the world.