Sharing inspirations for holidays and every day

Christmas and New Year mark our lifetime in a more profound way than any other holidays. This is the time when most of us pause all frantic activities, re-evaluate and plan.

Therefore, it is a good time for inspiration and learning.

Below I have compiled some of my recent inspirations. I hope that you find them useful in preparing for your own holidays.

A week ago, I discovered a new YouTube channel, Picking up limes, dedicated to “foodies, minimalists, travellers and all beautiful souls”.

The creator of the channel, Sadia, promises “a calm and relaxing space with … videos that help to nourish the cells and the soul.” I watched many of the videos and believe that Sadia delivers on her promises. 

You could also visit her website. I am looking forward to some free time to read the blog and dive into Sadia’s recipes.  

Update: I made these Sadia's pancakes last night and they turned out pretty good. I did not have buckwheat flour, instead, used whole wheat flour. I also used water instead of plant-based milk and sprayed my pan with olive oil instead of using coconut oil.

 
How to keep relaxed and calm, and yet have amazing holidays? 

Maybe we should all introduce some hygge into our holidays. Here is the advice of Jenny Mustard on how to celebrate Christmas in hygge style:

 

I am aesthetically and visually driven person.  Looking at creative arrangements and decorations for the holidays inspire me and allow me to bring more energetic spirit into my house, break the monotony of our everyday routine.

Here are three blogs that are a feast for the senses and might inspire you to put together an unexpected background for the seasonal celebrations:

Liiv blog

Hof 9

@mycasa

Loreta blog 

Dishfunctional Designs
 
What are the holidays without the warmth and enticing aromas of baked dishes, cookies and breads?

I am not a fan of sugar or any cakes, but this gorgeous gingerbread village cake presentation inspired me to concoct my own version of a minimal-sugar cake. 

I am planning on using two layers of my banana brownie recipe and a raspberry-coconut filling to "build" my own Christmas cake.

 

If the result is good, I will share the exact recipe.  Meanwhile, why not invent your own cake recipe, or maybe re-invent an old favorite recipe, in which you substitute the unhealthy ingredients with healthy ones?


I will also try these oat cookies on one of my days off, and maybe surprise my family with some almond pancakes.

 
Not having any plans for Christmas yet? Here is how Jenny celebrates her Christmas.  Why not try something new this year?

How about you, how do you bring the holidays home?

Do you have a sense of urgency

Have you read Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn? It is one of my favorite books.

I will not narrate the book, because I would mangle it. It would be equivalent to trying to explain all human emotions and their nuances. When I open this book, I do not read the words, I feel them.

I would like to describe only one character in this story of cancer and humanity.

One of the cancer patients in the ward is Vadim, and his story is included in the chapter Approaching the Speed of Light. Vadim was a young, 27-year old geologist diagnosed with melanoma. He was well aware of his fate: back then, everyone with melanoma died. It was rare for melanoma patients to survive a year.

After finding out his own fate with certainty, the guy developed an acute sense of urgency that propelled him into action before it was too late. Here is how Solzhenitsyn describes Vadim:

He became like a moving body approaching the speed of light. His “time” and his “mass” were becoming different from these of other people. His time was increasing in capacity, his mass in penetration. His years were being compressed into weeks, his days into minutes. All his life he’d been in a hurry, but now he was really starting to run. Any fool can become a doctor of science if he lives sixty years in peace and quiet. But what can one do in twenty-seven?

Twenty-seven had been Lermontov’s age. Lermontov hadn’t wanted to die either. … Still, Lermontov had carved himself a niche in our memory not just for a hundred years, but forever.

… Vadim had discovered an important and at first glance paradoxical point: a man of talent can understand and accept death more easily than a man with none – yet the former has more to lose. A man of no talent craves long life, yet Epicurus had once observed that a fool, if offered eternity, would not know what to do with it.

…Throughout his twenty-six years he had found no greater fulfillment, no more satisfying and harmonious feeling than the consciousness of time usefully spent. This, he thought, would be the most sensible way to spend his last months.

Do we have Vadim's sense of urgency? 

Or do we develop this sense only when it is too late? 

Remember that TODAY happens only once.

As the clock marks a new year, I wish you to develop a sense of urgency and purpose.  I wish you the consciousness of time usefully spent. 

Know where you are going.

I wish the same to myself.

New Year’s wishes or wishing for nothing

It is the end of the year, a time for questions and reflection. 

Did my past year have any meaning? 

Will I be able to find more meaning in the coming years? 

And how many years are ahead of me?  

When I was little, I trusted all adults "since they knew it all". Every time I reached a question without a solution, I had no doubt that the adults would find the answer. Now, that I am in the adult category, I realize how preposterous my views were. Adulthood does not equal knowledge, and certainly, the number of answer-less questions multiplies with age.

In my quest for answers, I found the BBC - documented extreme pilgrimage of Peter Owen Jones, a British parish priest. If you have not seen the three episodes, you can find them on YouTube. 

The journey leads to China, where Peter learns to cultivate the sense of non-attachment and realizes that he needs to attain “stillness of the mind”. Towards the end of the first journey, Peter says “…I stopped thinking and immersed myself in the daily life.” I am not sure that this behavior differs from our daily rat race, except for the fact that we try to accumulate lots of useless stuff during the race; whereas, the Zen - blessed monks do not hoard anything material. 

In India, Peter’s quest for spirituality becomes more bizarre. The journey starts with the Hindu gathering for the festival of Kumbha Mela on the river Ganges. Peter explains that Hindus believe that they are trapped in a cycle of death and rebirth, and salvation releases them from this cycle. The first part of this episode is dedicated to hashish, festival camps and semi-naked gurus. It is later, when the spiritual exploration is initiated through the road of austerity, yoga, and a quick tutorial on Hindu gods. The culmination of the episode is the cave experience in the Himalayas, where Peter again realizes that detachment from everything might be the path to spirituality.  

The third journey is in Egypt, where Peter subjects himself to the life of a Christian hermit. On his way to the hermit caves in the desert, Peter visits the oldest Christian monastery in the world - this of Saint Anthony. Residing alone seems to require more tenacity than ever envisioned. Thus, the theme of deprivation is further developed, and there is also the realization that “perhaps we have too many opportunities in our lives …to make the wrong choices”.
 
Did I learn anything? Peter’s pilgrimage confirmed that to our spirituality, the material world functions the same way as clothes to our bodies: the material world entraps our spirituality. 

The unifying theme of the three journeys is this of being able to detach yourself from the material world and be in touch with nature. In my case, age has brought a degree of detachment from the material world. I have this gnawing feeling that the THINGS in my house are the distractions on my way to the answers I seek, and that the time invested in taking care of the THINGS is a diversion. I find myself yearning to live only with the most essential.  

(How about a pair of shorts and a few T-shirts with flip-flops?)

I also have this inkling that only when we let go of every thought and anxiety, we can discern the meaning of life. It is only the contrast between the emotions/states that helps us perceive anything. There will be no day without the night, no poor without the rich, no beautiful without the ugly, no happiness without the misery, and certainly, no meaning without the lack of meaning. Therefore, the deprivation of our senses from human contacts, emotions, and sounds may allow us to grasp the meaning and richness of human life. 

Probably our pilgrimage through life should follow nature’s cycle: the same way winter’s austerity and deprivation of our senses is followed by spring's generosity of colors, shapes, and warmth, we need to spend time alone in order to appreciate everyone and everything around us. And then the newly-acquired appreciation will bring the meaning.