Small creatures must still navigate the world when it snows. They leave traces of their wanderings looking for small bits of food. How brave they are foraging in the cold, so exposed to larger predators. How clever to know their way home. How to find shelter in single digit temperatures. How to remain warm with the same skin they have in the summer during blistering heat. Nature is a wonder.

RUMI wrote: Unfold your own myth, without complicated explanation, so everyone will understand the passage.

As I write this at the approaching New Year, it seems appropriate to ponder what is our myth? The word can mean both truth, as told through a folktale, or a falsehood. Which is our myth? How can we determine that our life is inspirational and true rather than fraudulent? It’s a struggle because inside all of us (only speaking of my own experience) we can see ourselves as frauds. I can see myself as a fraud. Inside the mind there is a cauldron of ingredients that range from the most beatific to bestial. Which of these are we? In Joseph Campbell’s “Hero with a Thousand Faces” we are all the hero traveling on a journey…and taking many paths enroute to our goal of self-awareness.

There are no answers. Only the practical application of doing. Each expression of our mundane daily life is an expression of moving through a heroic journey. Can you see that? Can I see that? Rumi, ever the mystic and wise man, slightly mad man, answered in the next sloka: Your legs will get heavy and tired. Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you’ve grown, lifting.

Can you feel your wings? Perhaps we can fly together.