Look for the abundance, beauty that is all around

What is it about starting a new year that seems so difficult? Would it be easier in a warmer, sunnier clime? Seasonal affective disorder — or SAD — descends like a heavy blanket on some people.

Our daughter recently wrote on social media she wished she could just take a nap and wake up in March. One person responded, “I think that’s called a coma.”

New Year blues run deeper than stingy light and a plummeting thermometer. They meld with an “I have to do it all again” feeling. Life — and all it requires.

When I first learned I was going to be a grandmother I thought, “I just got everybody out the door — and now I have to start all over.”

Twenty grands later I’ve done a complete flip. I love being a grandma and welcome sharing the years with each one.

Staring down the pike is intimidating. You don’t know what all is there. The end isn’t in sight.

So, how to enter a new year with enthusiasm. A friend had momentous words when I was explaining how a raindrop sparkling in the sun was key to my embracing life in Alaska. She said, “I’m convinced we live in the abundance we are able to see.”

This is the year of “2020 vision.” Yet even optimum sight doesn’t do much good if we miss what there is to see. Who would think a particular raindrop on a leaf would mean anything. But it did for me — in “seeing” its connection with an earlier memorable experience. And it made the difference in getting started in Alaska.

Abundance isn’t glut. It is the generosity of all kinds of good things permeating each day — some being universal and some having an individual fit. The raindrop was mine to notice but it opened my eyes to the wonder of Alaska that is there for anyone.

Beginning to see the abundance that is all around, to know it for what it is — and live in it — is one way to look the new year in the eye. With a gleam.