A fresh perspective?

With Christmas behind us we're now steaming full speed ahead towards a new year.  As students left class for the last time this year so many of them seemed highly relieved that 2009 is finally coming to a close  -  and they all expressed a single hope.  That 2010 will be better.

Hmmm.....

You may remember a few years ago a market analyst got a trained chimpanzee to throw darts at a dart board that contained random names of stocks in the American stock exchange.  Apparently the chimp's portfolio out-performed the S & P (Standard and Poor) Index as well as most of the Mutual Funds.

So for 2010, rather than look to economic experts, soothsayers, fortune tellers or politicians for a glimpse into my year-to-come I am turning to my 3 cats.  And here is what I am learning from my furry friends.

My oldest cat, a beautiful Siamese with the now somewhat inappropriate name of Baby (she's going on 16) has always viewed the world with a very neurotic attitude.  In 'the world according to Baby' everyone and everything (myself excluded) is out to GET YOU!  She cringes and quivers when my husband reaches out to stroke her (after 16 years you'd think she'd get over herself).  A dropped fork or loud laugh from the other end of the house send her diving under the bed.  A leaf blowing across the deck has her racing inside.  Not a relaxing lifestyle.

Then there's Tigger.  At around 10 she's the youngest.  Bit of a mistake actually.  She had a very traumatic infancy it appears, having been found abandoned and starving.  So in 'the world according to Tigger' it's every cat for himself.  It's grab what you can and to hell with the rest.  It's gobble it down as quickly as possible so no one else gets to eat it first.  Unfortunately this approach leads not only to a little tension among the troops but also to obesity.

And then there's Sugar.  She's the middle one (no issues there however) and she's pure white. This fact may be the one that dominates her life and crafts her 'world according to Sugar'.  For 2 reasons.  Firstly I suspect that she believes herself to be the 'great white hope' of the cat world so she is CONSTANTLY cleaning herself  -  demonstrating thereby that she understands the need to lead by example.  And secondly her poor little pink ears were so assaulted by the sun that she had a little dance with death and had to have her ears chopped off.  So she now understands better than most her own fragile mortality.

So Sugar seems to have manifested her true Buddha nature.  She sits in the garden contemplating.  She is sweet and loving and a very calm presence.  She may well be the reincarnation of a very old (cat) soul  - pity my other two just don't seem to get it!

But what does this tell us about 2010?  What will the year hold for us?

It tells us that 2010 will be another year.  Like all the rest.  And what we make of it is up to us.  We can have the neurotic approach where we hunker down and hope nothing bad finds us.  Or we can bulldoze our way through, grabbing what we can on the way.

Or we can stop.  Sit.  Be quiet and let the noise in our heads settle down.  And then, even if we don't know which direction to take or which decisions may be the right ones, we can tune into our own Buddha nature where we can stop resisting what is, start accepting where we are and move forward in the spirit of leading by example.

Have a fantastic New Year!