Reflecting on Life Through a Year of Newsletters

Thank you for being part of this journey.

Where do you pause and reflect on how your life is going?  Is it sitting by a lake? Listening to a piece of music?  Watching a sunset? Writing these newsletters has been a gateway to self-reflection, a mirror that allows me to see my life more clearly.

I've come to see each piece as a form of meditation. Every time I sit down to write, I'm engaging in a process of contemplation, I’m observing my thoughts as they flow onto the page. Just as in meditation, where we watch our breath and our thoughts without judgment, I've learned to approach each topic, each sentence, with a sense of open awareness. This practice has allowed me to delve deeper into ideas, to examine them from angles I might otherwise have missed.

But this kind of reflection isn't just about introspection. It's about cultivating a clarity that extends beyond the sunset or the meditation cushion – or in my case, beyond the writing desk. Through this practice of regular reflection, I've found that my understanding of our shared experiences, challenges, and aspirations has grown richer and more nuanced.

In Zen, there's a concept called "beginner's mind" – approaching each moment with freshness and curiosity, as if encountering it for the first time. The Zen teacher, Shunryu Suzuki, famously taught, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”  Most of us fall into the comfortable routine of considering ourselves experts in life.  “I’m an expert at eating breakfast – I don’t need to pay attention to it as I start the day.”  “I’m an expert in who my partner  is – I don’t really need to pay close attention when we’re together at the end of the workday.” When we step into beginner’s mind (sometimes it’s called “don’t-know-mind”), we approach the familiar as though we’re encountering it for the first time, setting aside assumptions and just noticing.  This is the spirit I hope to bring to writing newsletters as I embark on another year.

My hope is to use each newsletter as a chance to sit with familiar ideas, to observe my habitual reactions, and to look at all of it with fresh eyes. Through this practice, I hope to find new ways to understand myself and the world around us.

As we've journeyed through various topics over the past year, from personal growth to global issues, from scientific findings to artistic expressions, we've engaged in a form of collective meditation. We've sat with complex ideas, sometimes uncomfortable truths, and inspiring possibilities. In doing so, we've created a space for growth, for change, for transformation.

This routine of self-reflection is a testament to the power of consistent practice, whether that's in meditation or in the act of writing and in regularly reading these newsletters. In the coming year, I invite you to approach each newsletter with this spirit of beginner’s mind. Take a moment to sit with the ideas presented, to reflect on how they resonate (or don’t) with your own experiences, to consider how they might shape your understanding of the world.

Thank you for being part of this journey. The hope is that this continued practice of reflection through these newsletters brings us all greater clarity, deeper understanding, and a more compassionate view of ourselves and the world around us.

Robert

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