Check-in questions for you to re-flect almost 9 months into 2021

Can you smell some distant's scent of f l o w e r s air come upon you?

Over here in Australia, I can get a whiff of the Spring.

Goodbye Autumn.

Note: skim past below my memo entry to read the self-reflection questions

This is my steps on how an introverted being is moving day by day during this pandemic:

1. Travel back memory lane (trust your child-like instincts - it will take your to a magical world like walking through the wardrobe in the Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe)
2. Use your senses. Note down your observations, insights, the experience in the moment (write spontaneous poems like below, express through music, crafts to understand your conscious and subconscious)
3. Spot the moon? Note down how you are feeling. Anxious? Energetic? Productive? Hermit-like? Action: Use my questions down below to fuel your being to adapt, let go, move (take baby steps!)

...A mini memo I noted sometime in the blur of 2020:

My dog was begging

To go outside

Ah, fresh laundry liquid

Means fresh clothes

That’s my neighbour

Thank you neighbour for reminding me -

We go back to the same habits but can

-with fresh eyes

-

My dog turns to our usual left

I breathe in

Call it Autumn air

Ah, Summer, you have left

Means less of your warmth

That’s Autumn

You smell a little more mysterious

-

Your cool nature of the air

Is softer than Summer

It fills my lungs

Ah clarity

Ah f-r-e-s-h

I go back to 2010

That’s ten years ago

I thought I was asleep in my high school years

It feels like you have not left me Autumn

-

My dog is begging

To go outside

What is the ‘outside?’

Our mental dream of a never ending horizon

Intertwined with memories

As we wait for what is next ~

~be patient in times like this.

Let’s look back into history and remember the hard times of our parents, grandparents and ancestors.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we have been feeling nostalgic…

I am picking up scents from my high school days… from my Vietnam trips… from an indescribable familiar smell that was from Autumn or Winter in the past… I can't exactly pick it. It feels near but distant at the same time - do you know what i mean?

I am listening to Vietnamese music during the period of war, loss and longing ~ pop music to traditional post-war era music … how is this so?

A friend I work with shared her reflections over this period. The period of ‘lamenting.’ I am also using a reading from yesterday on how we can learn to accept, grow during #lockdown (lockdown 6.0 over here).

Marketplace economy society vs. Gift intangible society

Our economy teaches us to act ‘transactionally.’ We give you a product/service and you give back a certain amount of money.

Our gift is community. The essence is time, long-suffering, process/journey…

I am longing.

This period is a transition. A transitional longing.

How can you use this longing to re-build yourself?

Here are the questions #selfreflectivepractice

It doesn't matter if your in Winter, Summer, Autumn or Spring, we can reflect in each season and in each moon cycle... Note this down and ponder:

To reflect on your 2020 year:

1. How have you managed the low tides/emotions/productivity in this period?
2. How will you be once we return?
3. How will you answer when the humans ask you... what did you do during that time?
4. How will you bring what you learned during this time when we return?
5. How did you feel early on about this news?
6. How do you feel now - almost 100 days in? 1 year?
7. How do you feel this period has helped you?
8. How do you think you will remember this period once the end of the year comes?

~

One aspect of growth is the concept of:

unlearning to re-learn

Read below to get a grasp of this analogy:

We use to be able to control, touch, and move things back (i.e rewind the tape) to know what happened before and then be able to move it forward…

Now, our modern gadgets are all about the latest upgrade, the newest physical features and blinds us to the next, next, next, thing or possible dream/desire.

Then we forget about the past versions that have been helpful throughout the years, the joys it brings and the memories we had with it.

When the next thing comes, we throw it away and it really does create this psychological reality: - is this how we are treating our relationships? Our plants and natural environment?

-Do we give up and leave? Or do we endure and try and make it still work?

-How about factors like time? Patience? Other values that make us human?

-How many more versions are we creating until we feel sufficient? Enough? satisfied?

-

Key take-aways:

Accept what it is and that it is.

When we feel stuck- make changes in our homes #mariekondoyourhouse instead of complaining, attacking and letting media dictate our mood for the day.

And there is no harm and no guilty/shameful feelings for going back to those child-hood days, playing tunes, making, baking, creating #nophones.

Look after yourself.

There's a bigger war that's bigger that the rest of the world right now. We can be allies with the good people like in movies and some were made called to wait in the midst.

There may be very well people praying and working in the background. It's not our fight, what we've done up to this point in our lives will reveal the cracks the higher-up corporations, organisations and government will need to work on.

-juju

(your modern-day millennial mystic)