Opening Ceremony

I don't consistently make New Year's resolutions, being guided more by necessity than by tradition. This year, I made a set of New Year's resolutions. I spent a year last year living in, and falling in love with, London (UK) and making amazing friends there, and I moved in late August of 2010 to Toronto to study in the PhD program of my dreams. Toronto, however, has proven itself an unfriendly city and I had some fairly major hiccups to enjoying my time here. I miss my amazing people in Vancouver, where I grew up, and in London, which became my second home in the very short space of a year. But I'll be here now for five years (fingers crossed that I jump through all the hoops that are required by the program) so I'm looking to grow some roots here. I've made two amazing friends here, and my boyfriend and I have moved into a great new place. My books are finally unpacked, my meditation mat is out, and I'm embarking on my journey towards happiness. Coming back to my New Year's resolutions...my goal for this year: get happy!

I've been fortunate--extremely fortunate--in my life so far, but I need to learn gratitude, sympathetic joy, and the difference between contentment and happiness. So that's my mission for the year.

I love great food, great literature, Bikram yoga and the stillness that I experience after a particularly wonderful Vipassana and Metta meditation practice. I describe the latter activities as hard-core yoga (an hour and a half in 35 degrees Celsius) and hard-core meditation (10-day silent--aka no communicating with other students--meditation courses are a part of the discipline) to avoid being pigeon-holed, but I've also recently begun looking into other possibilities for developing self-awareness, compassion, and sympathetic joy. I'm in the gathering phase of this journey. I'm also fighting some sort of non-clinical depression, which seems to be far more common that I'd imagined, and I'm optimistic that, through celebrating this journey through food, meditation, yoga, and literature like a Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar, and by recording it here and maybe, over time...dare I say it?...hoping for some sort of interaction in the land of blogs, this space will help to celebrate the experiences of beauty and the struggles along the way.

Now, about the name of this blog. "Yggdrasil" is the name for the Norse tree of life, from which "the High One, the All-Father, the Hooded One, the terrible Spear-Shaker, Odin of the many names, gained the secret of the runes, magic symbols by which men can record and understand their lives." The tree itself is the world tree, a massive ash, with three roots, one in the land of the giants (Jotunheim), one in the land of the gods and the Norns--the Fates--(Asgard), and one in the "dread realm" (Niflheim) of the serpent that constantly gnaws it. The world ash, Yggdrasil, unites the heavens with the three earthly realms and reminds me also of the Celtic Tree of Life, a symbol of union and wisdom. It reminds us that everything is cyclical and interconnected. Good reminders in a search for overflowing happiness.

Now, for some happiness! Ready. Set. Go!

Note: all quotes about Yggdrasil are from Neil Philip's The Illustrated Book of Myths: Tales and Legends of the World. Ill. Nilesh Mistry. Mississauga, ON: Fenn Publishing, 1995, p. 62.