New Beginnings

These weeks mark the Spring Festival for my family. It's a celebration of the Lunar New Year and invitation for abundance and good luck in the coming year, characterized this year by the seventh animal in the Chinese zodiac. True to a tradition of introspective yin energy balanced by the more energetic yang, 2026 leaves behind the intuitive snake and takes on the exuberant and adventurous momentum of the horse.

It's impossible to know where a year can take us -- individually, through our relationships, and in the world we share with so many other living beings. But change is happening all around.

Change that forces "our hearts to break so our vision can be fixed."

Change that asks us to strengthen our compassion as a muscle, exert ourselves to practice at peace, and gladden unabashedly in moments of happiness. 

With change comes new beginnings.

No matter in what shape or form we arrive, let us welcome change and let us "be the change."