I used to feel melancholy on New Year’s Eve. It was a feeling that skirted in from the cold and shadows, dimming an otherwise happy time for me.

It’s still unclear to me where the feelings have come from, and in past years I spent far too much time trying to trace their origins. This year, though, I decided that origin stories don’t always matter. How you react to them does.

The enigmatic author Zora Neale Hurston wrote, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent many years asking questions.

I didn’t wake up this morning with answers. But I did wake up knowing this was an answering year. 

This is a year for answers to questions I don’t even know I have yet.

This is a year for clarity, purpose, and focus. 

Some beautiful time passed by while I was in my meditation space today. I don’t always enter meditation with a purpose (clarity over a question, mindfulness, to calm anxiety…).

Sometimes I just want to sit in the quiet, and breathe as my thoughts pass.

Today was one of those moments. 

My back hurt. My shoulder blades hurt. It was difficult to sit correctly and breathe with my diaphragm. But beyond the aches, beyond the pain, there was stillness. A calm and quiet that’s always sitting there, waiting. Like an old friend, waiting and smiling as they say, “What took you so long?” 

2019 is a year for answers. Even if you don’t know what the questions are.

Begin your quiet journey inward. Embrace the unknown, and hold that space for healing and calm in your own beautiful universe.