Switching Out

We’ve just left the lunar year of the ox and are celebrating the New Year of the Tiger. The wise people of ancient Asia who decided to string out the new year celebration to two weeks rather than the Western version of a day or two had it right. Westerners stress themselves out trying to get everything done in one evening and the following day. After which they are too exhausted to move.

Asian cultures have the traditional New Year’s Eve dinner, red envelopes with money given to children, and firecrackers. Many people still go to temple, if only for that one time of the year. If you’ve never witnessed them, parades and public celebrations can be exceptionally exciting.

People who write about politics currently have an enormous amount of material at their disposal. My personal belief is that very few people would care to hear anything a mystic might have to say about politics. I have opinions. I know what I have seen and heard from the angels, but mostly it comes down to two words.

So what?

On an even more dangerous topic than politics, there was the recent resignation of quarterback Tom Brady. During all of the years I lived in Boston, like now, I was basically clueless about sports. I knew who he was because I heard others talking about him. Tom Brady could have been a mechanic or a lawyer and it would all have been the same to me. Regardless of the headlines, I was always struck by how he seemed to be a nice boy. (Yes, I mean boy. I’m old enough to be his father.)

Tom Brady will never be another Bart Starr. Nobody will. Bart was a shining beacon back in the 1960’s. Leading the lowly Green Bay Packers back to life with Coach Lombardi was a miracle. The first football championships and Super Bowls are never to be repeated, leaving Bart hand the Packers in their place in history. Even bigger than the 2016 Cubs.

Miracles happen.

All of the examples above are things happening in the world at large. What is happening in our inner world matters. Anything — any thoughts or deeds — that hinder our inner growth calls out to us. It’s time to switch out the old and switch in the better.

Unless Tom Brady is a relative, odds are he’s not central to our lives.

Too much focus on sports distracts us from the sport that ought to be first on our list. Dropping the negative ball that drags us down in life. The one that holds us back from being our real, honest, surprising selves.

If we focus too much on television or movies to distract us, it’s time for us to switch. If our preoccupation with anything gets in the way of paying attention to what is going on out there in the real world, it’s time to switch. Turn off our head noise. Pay more attention to the real world.

To look more closely at our world. To pay attention to what is happening to anybody other than ourselves.

In spite of our too narrow focus on one facet or another in our lives, there have been and are times when we need to take a break. We need to go on vacation from ourselves and let in more of the rest of creation. More of the world outside of ourselves purely because we have pushed other people and things away.

We have become so caught up in our own little worlds and its minute preoccupations that we have no idea who anyone else is and how they enrich us. Much less that there is a Chinese New Year celebration fascinatingly different from Western New Year. Business, politics, sports and all of the world outside of ourselves exists.

They are facts of our lives. Facts which broaden our lives and souls. Facts that carry the possibility of enlarging our spirituality.

We might not like one or the other of them, but we are spiritually richer when we at least acknowledge them. Openness to ideas or things in which we have no compelling interest does not make those things or ideas bad.

It means we — all of us — get to be open to a world outside of ourselves.

Every second of every day life gives us the opportunity to think well of others. To speak well of them. To behave with dignity and respect towards one another.

There are worlds of opportunities to live deeply beyond our imagining.