Leap Year

It's very fitting that this is a leap year. Leap years come once every four years. They are not common. This year for me, this last twelve months, has been anything but common. I have been challenged, I have fallen apart, been strong, felt empowered, helpless, hopeless, dopeless (just kidding), I have felt myself sink below the surface and rise up again. I have discovered that my well is far deeper than I could have imagined.

Do you know why we have leap years?

Since seasons and astrological events do not repeat in a whole number of days if we were to have a calendar with a static number, say 365, eventually that calendar would drift off track. Every four years an extra day is added so that the drift can be corrected. 

That's amazing right? And right now you are all oohing and aahing over the fact that this has huge implications for your life right? right?

It does for mine. We go about our daily lives doing the mundane tasks that we do to survive and we get further away from ourselves. We become our job, our marriage, our responsibilities. We drift off track from our aspirations, hopes, dreams, our deepest heart cries. It's easy to do. So much requires our attention. There are ten hours of tasks to fit into the few hours between work and sleep. Messy houses, messy desks, messy lives.

The concept of throwing in a leap year, a life raft, to catch up makes perfect sense. I recently had to take my own personal leap year and it was the hardest decision I've ever made. Daily I wonder if I made the right one, I wonder if I should have waited it out. Maybe I would have gotten happier? Maybe I could have pushed harder. I'll never know the answer. I do know that I saw difficulty in my life and I did something about it, even if I went about it the wrong way.

This summer I will be continuing my leap year. I'll be attending the Creative Joy Retreat hosted by Jennifer Louden, Susannah Conway and Marianne Elliot. It will be five days centered around finding and creating joy. I can't wait.  I'll be flying to New York, staying in an old monastery located along the Hudson and the Appalachian trail and re-connecting with .... me.

Taking a leap isn't easy. It often requires throwing yourself into a decision with reckless abandon.You jump over a puddle but you leap over a cliff. One night I was watching So You Think You Can Dance and there was a song where the dancer, Melanie, leaped into the arms of her partner with such abandon that it took me back. How could anyone have that much faith that there would be arms to catch them on the other side? I thought about that question for a very long time. We don't know. We can't be sure that there will be someone to pick us up if our decisions don't work out. What you have to decide is that it's worth the risk.

Discovering yourself, reconnecting with yourself, is worth the risk.

While it may not be through a retreat like mine I hope that each of you has the opportunity to correct the drift in your life and re-discover your heart cries this special February 29th.

Happy happy leap day.

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