Practical Wisdom: What Needs Your Attention Before the Equinox?

 We are nearing the end of the season of dreaming and find ourselves a few days from the Spring Equinox, a powerful time of transition in the natural world, and one the human world would benefit from giving a bit of attention.

Late winter is the season of dreaming, and dreaming is not idle. It’s gestational. It’s the hidden labor of the psyche and soul, the inward time, when something unformed begins gathering substance below the surface of visibility. Winter has its own intelligence. Beneath cold soil and bare branches, life is not absent. It’s listening, consolidating and preparing.

But there comes a point when dreaming can no longer remain invisible.

A seed may rest in darkness for a long while, held by the earth, protected by its shell, drawing from silence what it needs. Yet eventually it begins to sense warmth and seeks light. Something in its small, ancient body recognizes the summons. Rise now. Reach now. Risk now. The journey from seed to blossom is not sentimental. It’s exacting. The seed must split. The tender shoot must press against resistance. The fragile green stem must find its way upward through weight, cold, and uncertainty.

We are not so different.

Each year, just before the Spring Equinox, I find myself returning to a simple but demanding question: What do I want to harvest in the fall? To harvest a certain fruit, one must plant the right seeds in the spring.

And one must plant at the right time.  Not after the next obligation, or the next trip, or the next emotional weather system passes through. One must plant now. After the dreaming.  Now is the time to plant the seeds of the future you'd like to see come to fruition.

This is an aspect of spiritual adulthood. It requires decision-making. There is a difference between managing the dreams that have accumulated and consciously birthing a dream into reality. Many of us become adept at life maintenance. We answer, organize, soothe, schedule, provide, and respond. We become faithful stewards of the visible demands of life, while something more interior waits patiently to be born.

I know the management pattern well. I imagine many of us do.

There have been times when I could lead, care, produce, hold others with genuine love, and, despite all that, still feel some quieter region of my own life going unattended. One of the more humbling truths of maturity is that a person can be highly competent and still drift from her own center.

The natural world offers a correction. Seeds do not waste themselves trying to grow in all directions. They don’t send roots and shoots in the east, west, north, and south all at once. They respond to warmth. They orient toward light. They participate in a disciplined form of becoming, though I use that word sparingly. Growth requires discernment. Energy must be directed. Not every possibility can be fed.

So, before the Spring Equinox arrives, it’s worth asking, with tenderness and without evasion: What warmth will you follow? What light are you seeking? What in your life wants to blossom, and how hardy are you willing to be on its behalf?

I love that word, hardy. It carries texture. It evokes bark, root, stem, and leaf. Hardy is about resilience. It means being capable of enduring the late frost, the stony ground, the days when nothing appears to be happening, and yet the work of growth is still underway.

This is the kind of strength I trust more as I age.

Perhaps what needs your attention now is your body, which has been asking for nourishment, movement, or mercy in ways you keep postponing. Perhaps it’s an emotional truth you’ve been stepping around because it would require a deeper reckoning. Perhaps it’s relational. A conversation. A boundary. An apology. A clearer request. Perhaps it’s creative. A book, a class, a garden, a business, or a practice that has lived too long in the realm of someday.

Maybe what you want to grow is your sovereignty.

There is a particular form of exhaustion that comes from giving sustained energy to all the things that do not belong to your deepest life. We can spend years watering obligations, identities, and expectations that have long since passed their season. Any of us can become brilliant at tending everyone else’s field while our own ground grows dry. There comes a point when that arrangement is no longer viable because life itself is asking for a truer distribution of energy.

Spring is so much more than decorative. It’s selective. Nature understands this. The tree doesn’t keep every branch. The seed doesn’t preserve its shell out of loyalty to what once protected it.

Creation requires focus and a willingness to stop calling everything urgent and begin listening for what is alive.

So before the equinox arrives in full, sit quietly for a moment. Look back at your journal if you’ve kept one.  What dreams has the winter given you? What feels warm and beckoning? Where is the light calling you upward? What is ready to take form, and what in you has waited long enough?

It's time to begin, even if the beginning is small.

Sweep the corner. Make the call. Protect the hour. Speak the truth. Water the roots. Decline what is draining the life from you.

Choose with care what you will grow.

In just a few days, spring will open its doors to you.  Now is the right moment to decide what dream or dreams deserve your full and loving attention for the upcoming season of birth and growth. May your dreams serve as the seeds of a plentiful harvest.