Yuletide greetings…

“I love yuletide,” chirped a friend as I explained a kooky Winter Solstice tradition in our household. She threw me a little with her use of yuletide. My favorite online dictionary defines it as, “the period of celebration of a pre-Christian festival associated with the (northern) winter solstice.” (Wiktionary)

Winter 2008 by G. Bosela

Our children as babies loved a Canadian television cartoon called Little Bear. On the shortest day of the year Little Bear decorated trees in the forest with cookies and treats for the animals. In homage to Little Bear every year we buy a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, put it in our yard, and decorate it with honey, cranberries, sunflower seeds and popcorn. You can imagine the menagerie we attract with such abundance.

As part of my 2012 Winter Solstice prep I stumbled upon a a brainy online piece debunking the Mayan end-of-world predictions. Have you missed this? Lucky you.

Doomsayers have locked onto the Winter Solstice 2012 as a prophesy for the end of the world. The rationale is tied to the Mayan calendar, a construct of cycles with impossibly long time periods.

It seems that professional archaeologists, Mayanologists and astronomers all agree that the end-of-world claim violates that basic tenets of the Mayan concepts of life and time. “This calendar and its many forms was primarily cyclic in nature, composed of several repeating rounds, each one of specific numbers of days, that were continuously beginning and ending as the different cycles intermeshed with one another. If anything is happening at all, and the data suggests that it is highly suspect, it is heralding a renewal and continuous cyclical transition to the next cycle.” (2012 Hoax)

Renewal. Continuous cyclical transition? Sounds like the Mayans may have my answer to transition…..

Should we be surprised by this internet-borne false sensation? Earlier this year I referenced another internet falsehood. Online power brokers titled a high school commencement speech by English teacher David McCullough, Jr., of Wellesley, MA, as the ‘you’re not special’ speech. His remarks couldn’t be farther from that summary. (Listen to the commencement speech.) He urged students, “to do whatever you do for no other reason than you love it and you believe in its importance.”

Simple statement, right? Does it summarize your current pursuits?

My guess is that last Friday if you were a parent with a 1st grader at Sandy Hook Elementary School you might have thought that the Mayan calendar’s end-of-world predictions were true. How else could you rationalize such horror? Maybe because of the enormity of that loss my awareness of gratitude is that much greater as I enter this holiday season.

In ’12 Novofemina taught me many things, most especially to walk with gratitude. Its starts with this blog. I am enormously grateful for those parts of my life touched by Novofemina. The visitor total surpassed 10,000 just a few weeks ago. Unbelievable…. Also, many of you have shared with me your perspective on transition in our Research Jam. Missed this? The Jam is my invitation to each of you to lend your voice to my understanding of transition by taking a quick online survey (no registration required). I’d be grateful if you’d take a few minutes of your time to give me your perspective. To those who already have, many thanks.

Gratitude has also taught me to simply ask what it is that I seek in this transition. In Novofemina’s Summer Book Review #24 author Gail Rentsch offered, “many experts suggest that life is as good as its going to get when several things come together for us: we become fully engaged, we challenge ourselves, and we do something that has meaning.” (Smart Women, pg 125+) Do you have a plan for this simple ‘as good as it gets’ construct for ’13?

Gratitude has also allowed me to be ok with constant refinement. Corporate strategy expert Clay Christensen offered in Novofemina’s Summer Book Review #15 that “93% of original strategies fail….companies that win do so not because they had a brilliant original strategy but because they iterate quickly.” (How will you…pg 87) What will you refine in ’13?

Whether you celebrate religious, spiritual, secular or a Little Bear-esque forest frolic, I hope your season is characterized with great joy and peace. Thank you for walking with me through this time of transition.

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