Was 2023 a good or bad year for you? Yoga can help you choose your outlook and embrace the New Year ahead!
As 2023 draws to a close, many of us are drawn to review the previous twelve months and what they have brought. Was it a year of hope or of fear, a year of accomplishment or of failure, of joy or of sadness?
In the Bhagavad Gita’s chapter 10, Arjuna asks his best friend, Krishna, to describe himself. Krishna has been many things in his life, including a wily child who stole butter and a rowdy teenager who hid girls’ clothing when they bathed. Yet, as Krishna rattles off quality after quality, it is clear he focuses on his excellent aspects. Sure, he does throw in a couple of less savory qualities, but overall his self-description is stellar. This is in sharp contrast to Arjuna, who has been describing himself as someone with failed morals, overwhelming greed and an inability to act, and has trouble seeing any of his own good aspects.
This great yoga text illustrates that how we choose to view and describe something is paramount to how we perceive it. Here is one way we could describe 2023:
A year of massive war, death and depravity in many parts of the world;
a year of tremendous political strife that could split a country in two;
a year where the environment has risen up against us through violent storms, depleted soil, and tremendous volcanic activity;
a year in which loved ones suffered and even died.
All of the above is certainly true. Yet here is another way of viewing this same year:
A year doctors performed CPR for 3 hours on a legally dead toddler until they brought him back to life;
a year when police called on a Black boy, who was asking neighbors for chores so he could buy a Playstation, showed up with a brand-new PS5 to gift him;
a year a military base was transformed into a city park;
a year when a bird thought to be extinct was rediscovered (read about all these wonderful stories and more here).
2023 contained all of those events and many, many more. Which will we choose to reflect on when we look back, and what will we look for in 2024? It’s all up to us.
Image by porcorex