A New Page

A friend of mine recently took a yoga class where the instructor typically shares a thought for the day at the end of the class. She told me about what he said, and I thought it was a great idea that I wanted to pass on and expand upon. He said that when he was younger, he always looked forward to the start of school in the Fall. Each year he would begin his classes with new pens, new pads of paper, new erasers – all the school supplies he needed to learn, read, write and grow. And it was the “newness” of it all that made him smile. That’s what he remembers most. He has translated that into being able to look at a ream of blank paper today and see all the possibilities that lie in that blank, new supply.

Furthermore, he has taken this idea a step further to recognize that each morning, there is a new piece of paper on which he can write his script for the day. Each day is new and brings new possibilities – a fresh start. Lovely.

I’d like to take this notion even further and say that if yesterday’s paper is still around – we must take care with what we do with it. When you finish a day, do you throw the paper away? Do you file it? Do you shred it? Or do you fold it neatly into a small package that you carry with you for the rest of your life? Well, with some things, I imagine we’d want to carry the paper with us. Like when we get married, or have a child, or celebrate other of life’s momentous occasions. But what happens when we carry all the pieces of paper with us, including those that were not so momentous, or life-enhancing? If each day is a piece of paper in itself, and you are 40 years old, you’d be carrying 14,600 pieces of paper with you every day. Do the math: that’s 29.2 reams of paper -- In other words, a file cabinet!!

So – what can we do with the papers of yesterday? Well, we have options. We can create a “file cabinet” of sorts, and store everything – or we can choose what we save (and might want to revisit) and what we discard. Either way, it’s about choice. Just as every morning we can wake up and choose to pull out a fresh piece of paper and write a new script.

THree THings

Body – How heavy is the load of old paper you are carrying? Is it manifesting physically in your body?

Mind – What possibilities can you dream up in your mind for today’s piece of paper? What opportunities exist that you haven’t yet created?

Spirit – A blank piece of paper is pure. It’s white, light and bright. Your spirit is pure in the same way. When we write on something so pure, and imprint it with color and ink, are we consciously choosing what marks we want to make – is someone choosing for you?