The New Year is here. The winter solstice has just passed, marking both the beginning of winter, and the beginning of lengthening days. While we in the Northern Hemisphere await the return of the light and warmth (and while my favorite TV shows are in reruns), let’s use the winter as a time for reflection, for introspection. It’s an excellent time to look back on the past year, the past five years, our entire lives. Living well is rather like cooking an excellent dish: we must stop to taste the recipe before adding more ingredients, and then adjust the seasonings. We need to do this with our lives.

I’ve had a LOT of practice with introspection (trust me, that ain’t bragging!). Several factors led to my experience with introspection. I’m an only child who had rather insecure parents. I was very shy as a child. I was overweight ("husky" was the term we used) until I was 16, and was often teased. I spent most of my teen years living on a farm five miles out of (a small) town, without any similarly aged neighbors. I had to learn to entertain myself, and I ended up "going into" myself often, from a very young age. I achieved great focus this way.

I thought I was truly blessed to have such self-defining focus when I was so young. I was one of those precocious four-year olds who announced "I’m going to be a paleontologist when I grow up." I actually did become a paleontologist, and a darned good one, being grateful for the focus and clarity that allowed me to navigate through relevant courses and activities during high school, to select the most appropriate undergraduate school, and to apply for (and to my focused but unconfident surprise, be accepted at) the top grad school for paleontology in the country, if not the world. I traveled, I researched, I taught, I lectured, I discovered, I wrote, I published, and I got my dream job. But I did this by largely living my life safely, without much seasoning and spice.

Then the Universe decided it was time for me to change directions and focus, and what I had thought was my dream came crashing down. I thought at the time that I "must" be inferior. Only subsequent healing, introspection and reflection on the details of that period showed the exact opposite was true, and the purpose of those events was 1) to teach me to believe in my talents, 2) to refocus those talents to better society and the world, and 3) to begin living with no regrets, fully seasoned!

Part of the healing process required reflecting on how I reacted to people, situations and incidents. When we "react to something someone else does," we are actually reacting to something in ourselves. This is the "mirror effect," that effect that allows others to reflect ourselves back at us. If we could look at ourselves objectively in a glass mirror, we wouldn’t need to encounter our reflections in others. Fortunately, the Universe has set up fail-safes and back up plans for each us, if we only pay attention.

I had to pay attention to the fact that my environment has always been important to me. From the time I was a small child, I spent a good bit of effort making sure my immediate surroundings were comfortable and esthetic. This including doing my own art, placing furniture and various accoutrements "properly," and growing a variety of indoor plants. When I moved out on my own, I applied that desire for comfort and esthetic style to cooking and other aspects of domestic life. I eventually came to realize that what I had done was to create a sanctuary wherever I lived; my sanctuaries provided an escape from whatever in the outside world was bothering or threatening me.

In my sanctuary, I was safe. In graduate school, my home sanctuary provided a comfortable environment to do research, synthesize data and make new discoveries. One of those discoveries was a chink in my armor of career focus! For the first time, events coalesced to lead me to consider the question, "What would I do if I didn’t do paleontology?" My mind immediately harkened back to my childhood, when I wanted to see all people live well by taking care of themselves and their environment, thus making it a better world for all of us. Once that old memory imprinted among current memories, I temporarily forgot it and continued with my previous profound focus on a paleontological career.

Despite my great focus and consequent accomplishments, and despite being relatively demure and polite (certainly not seasoned and spicy as I am today!), I discovered that my lifestyle modus operandi did not receive universal approval from my academic superiors. There seemed to be an unwritten law that a graduate student must suffer. One faculty member even admitted (with questionable pride) to subsisting on the equivalent of birdseed during his grad school days. Was this the right role model for me? Was there something wrong with my visiting the farmers market throughout the growing season each year, culminating in the autumnal harvest from which I would create my now famous multipurpose ragout among other delicacies, and freeze them to enjoy throughout the winter? Apparently, there was. When a group of us students spent one (ONE!) evening drafting a petition to encourage faculty to treat a particular student with fairness and respect, we were chastised for wasting our time and not doing our research. This was yet another chink in the armor of my career focus. Did I really want to prioritize researching fossils ahead of aiding a fellow human being?

Once again, despite this shock, my focus returned, success continued, and I eventually relocated to Chicago for my dream job. I was in heaven. I was living in a city that I loved. I was succeeding on all fronts beyond my greatest imagination. I had created a fantastic sanctuary at home in a neighborhood that seemed to satisfy every need I had. All of my hard work, dedication and focus were paying off. I was on the fast track!

That is, I was on the fast track until I was derailed when a trusted individual stabbed me in the back. I’ve written about that sabotage before (specifically about letting go of the pain it caused), but that event was the final chink in my armor that completely eliminated my paleontological career focus. Once I shed both the armor and my paleontological career, I was free to pursue the goals I had realized all along I needed to pursue. Rather than pursue them later in my life as I had planned originally, I could pursue them sooner! Had I not been reflecting on my life all along, I might not have seen this as an opportunity (and even so, it took a while to make this opportunity into reality).

This was one of the greatest shocks of my life. When an event of such improbability occurs, it behooves us to pay attention, and spend some time reflecting on its meaning. In my case, thanks to hindsight, I can see that I had to attain a certain level of education and expertise, and that my focus had to be shifted to do my true life’s work. Being as focused and resolute as I was, the shock HAD to be significant, or I would have ignored it. As I wrote above, substantial healing was necessary from this final chink in my armor, but I am grateful. Everything happens for a reason!

And I am grateful that reflecting on life and looking into mirrors also provides an opportunity for the occasional "atta boy!" (or "atta girl!"). Celebrate every day! Sometimes you truly have to stop and assess all of the good you’ve done in your life. I’m talking about the little things. I’m talking about that friendly smile for the clerk at the grocery store. I’m talking about treating everyone you meet with respect. I’m talking about forgiving the frustrated driver who thought that cutting you off was a good idea. I’m talking about acknowledging that you are a good person, and you deserve to celebrate that fact while you are on your Path to personal growth.

So, here we are in the present. I am comfortably in my sanctuary, and hopefully, you are in yours. Grab a cup of hot cocoa (I’m enjoying some Mexican hot chocolate as I write this, frothy and redolent of cinnamon) and reflect on your life. Pet your pet(s) (it’s good for them and good for you; my Persians Lugh and Luna are both purring while competing for a space under my desk lamp), and reflect on your life. Hug a loved one, and reflect on your life. And be grateful! I know that I am grateful for my Seasoned Living!