A Rose Petal for your Thougths

Yesterday, December 31 (2020), I had an extraordinarily enchanting experience, which made my New Year’s Eve one of the most memorable.

A dear friend of mine, a dancer, a carer, a lover of life, suggested that we, a small group of friends, go into the forest, right around 5 pm when the sun sets to perform a New Year’s Eve ritual. 

All curious and excited, we meet at the entrance of the forest and slowly but surely made our way deeper into the woods. We were lucky because full moon was just a few days prior and there was a mysterious, light shimmer hovering above the treetops.

Once arrived at our favorite tree (an old misshapen beech), Viviana handed us each a little bag of rose petals. The instructions were as follows: “As we continue up the path, slowly but surely let’s become aware of all the negative thoughts that have kept repeating themselves throughout the year, thoughts that no longer serve us, all our familiar ruminations. And for every one of these dark thoughts, let’s take a rose petal and drop it to the ground.” 

At first, it was hard for me to identify many negative thoughts, as I had been working on that topic for a while. But as we kept walking, they kept coming, and soon I had run out of rose petals.

Amazing how unaware we are of our daily ruminations, and how interesting to bring them to light.

I will expand on that subject at some later time. 

Suffice it to say that when I woke up the next morning, and the first unuseful thoughts started to creep into my mind, I immediately thought of the magical exercise we did in the forest, and I started to discard those thoughts—one petal at a time.