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It had been a difficult couple of months: I pulled a muscle in my back, an old health problem flared up for no apparent reason, and I experienced a number of dashed disappointments- all of which had the net effect of dampening my internal fire. Then there was the trip on the calendar for Paris. Instead of a heart filled with excitement I felt only a dull thud, because like many of you under the influence of the recent Saturn-Neptune square, life had become a study in disillusionment. I had been disappointed so many times that I found it difficult to generate hope.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAbandon all hope.\u201d<\/em> <\/strong>I\u2019ve long loved this, Pema Chodron\u2019s, Buddhist slogan. Like faith, hope is like a beautiful will o\u2019 wisp, a heartening and optimistic promise of a brighter future ahead. But it can also feed our illusions. Like a well-intentioned friend or lover who makes fantastic promises but doesn\u2019t ever follow through, hope – the faith that \u201cthis time it will be different\u201d – can be corrosive and insidious.<\/strong> Hope can be a destructive force, undermining our ability to meet reality with\u00a0honesty and clarity.<\/p>\n I\u2019d reached this kind of crossroads with travel. Let me illustrate my point: I say Paris, and you will quite naturally get wide-eyed and think: Sexy romance, the Eiffel tower in the rain, croissants,\u00a0bohemian cafes. Oui, oui?<\/em> This is hope, all\u00a0Parisian coquettes and macaroons. The reality?\u00a0Travel is a constant lesson in surrendering… to uncomfortable accommodations, weather, getting lost, not to mention how much time one spends waiting: at the airport, on the plane, in line, jet-lagged and wide-eyed for the sun to finally rise. And these are just the run of the mill travel\u00a0inconveniences, without my chronic health\u00a0issues.<\/p>\n Then, a few weeks before our planned trip, the terrorist attacks happened, and that was, well, a lot of things if not sobering. Combined with all the trips I\u2019d taken throughout 2015, places that had brought me to my knees (Honolulu, Milan, Vienna, places equally charmed) I took this as\u00a0a sign that it was time to totally relinquish my great expectations or stop traveling altogether. In addition to the usual travel annoyances, I needed to be okay with the high likelihood and frequency of\u00a0physical pain,\u00a0hunger (traveling\u00a0with food sensitivities) and\u00a0insomnia -all of which I experience during acutely during travel. I would take precautions, the travel self-care strategies I\u2019ve\u00a0learned over the years, but I knew there were no guarantees even then. I needed to be deeply okay with a monk-like austerity, accepting whatever came my way, blaming neither my self, nor Paris, for hardships incurred. If I could surrender, go in with no expectations, it didn\u2019t matter if it was a wash or a gain. I would win.<\/p>\n There\u2019s an image each of us carry of a thing, event, or person –an image of what or who they could be. Then there\u2019s the reality.<\/strong> The thing is, reality always wins\u00a0every time. No\u00a0matter\u00a0how much you want to “believe”, sometimes you have to make the hard calls. When \u201coptimism\u201d, \u201cfaith\u201d \u201chope\u201d are flaky friends who are incapable of showing up when you call…Well, you just can\u2019t keep eating the alluring sugary macaroon and keep expecting it to nourish your soul. Humans spend a lot of time blaming the macaroon lover\/boss\/thing, but the reality is they are just doing what they do. The real problem is our distorted\u00a0and\u00a0ever-hopeful great expectations.<\/p>\n The Saturn-Neptune has (temporarily) passed and we\u2019ve arrived at the Sagittarius New Moon with it’s potential for a\u00a0clean slate and fresh start. New Moons bring endings and\u00a0new beginnings, and\u00a0the latter can’t truly happen without the former.\u00a0Have we abandoned all that illusory hope and surrendered to what is? It wasn’t\u00a0my intention to write a debbie downer essay. Intuitive, fiery Sagittarius follows emotionally intense Scorpio, and that\u2019s by design; this season is meant to reinvigorate our spirits, to re-kindle them with hope, optimism, faith. The holidays help us to do this, as well as the promise of a new year. However, given the surreal state of our world right now, few of us can afford misplaced faith.<\/strong> We can’t afford to\u00a0keep feeding the demons of hope, allowing them to spin out\u00a0empty\u00a0promises. We’ve suffered enough. We need to gather\u00a0our wits, to see things clearly, because only then can we be effective.<\/strong><\/p>\n So wit-gather. Think critically. Make tough calls. Decide to abandon all hope and meet reality clearly. Not reality as you want it to be, but as it actually\u00a0is. With Saturn in Sagittarius for\u00a0two more years,\u00a0this is the path forward — for all of us.<\/p>\n So\u00a0you’re probably wondering: Well,\u00a0how was\u00a0Paris, already? I did\u00a0Saturn’s due diligence\u00a0by\u00a0making sure my husband carried my luggage so I wouldn’t sprain my back, and\u00a0creating a food allergy card (in French) that I could present to cafes, among other\u00a0precautions that necessity demands. I also abandoned all hope that this would make a difference. I let go entirely, accepting that whatever happened I would be okay.\u00a0No expectations. Not a single one. Paris was heavenly.<\/em><\/p>\n It had been a difficult couple of months: I pulled a muscle in my back, an old health problem flared up for no apparent reason, and I experienced a number of dashed disappointments- all of which had the net effect of dampening my internal fire. Then there was the trip on the calendar for Paris. […]<\/p>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"