BlissFullU

Last night was the Lunar New Year, and so here we are in the Year of the Ox!

My son had quite an evening of it all. It turned out that his college had a two-and-a-half hour Zoom Lunar New Year festival right before his radio show, which featured two hours of pan-Asian music. Because he was tied up all evening, we ended up eating the last of the General Tso’s Cauliflower I made earlier this week (which actually worked really well as leftovers, yum). Tonight we had our New Year feast of longevity noodles with spicy pork and bok choy (a traditional dish for health and wellness for the year) and oranges (which represent gold for prosperity).

Ox is a animal that is hard-working and persistent. It keeps its head down and just keeps plowing ahead. So it feels like the perfect animal for this moment in time. If we can all just stay patient, keep wearing our masks and washing our hands and doing all the same boring things that keeps ourselves and each other safe, then maybe we can finally get to the point where our lives back back to “normal,” whatever that may look like now. So I’m up for being an Ox for a while, even though that’s not necessarily my normal state of being.

One of my good friends shared this description of this year, which is actually a year of the Metal Ox, with the following story attached (regular readers should know I LOVE stories).

2021 Year of the Metal Ox
In early agricultural communities, people often went for days without eating and feared starvation. To aid suffering humans, the gods and goddesses removed Ox from heaven, where she was a star, and sent her to earth. The divine ones instructed Ox to tell people that with her help they would avoid starvation and would eat every three days.

But Ox misunderstood, and told humanity that they would eat three times a day! Ox had to make her words true, so that is why Ox labors for humans and endures many burdens without complaint. Therefore, the year of the Ox is time for honesty, hard work, duty, and discipline. Like Ox plowing the field, success is attained through diligent work and conscientious effort. The Ox is a powerful animal who has the ability to transform the negative challenges of Rat year 2020 into positive outcomes in 2021. Ox can save us from disaster, and help reconstruct because Ox is a builder.

So Ox year is the time to follow through and bring to completion what was started in Rat year. Establish a routine, use tried-and-true methods, and stay with a structure that can bring a bountiful harvest in autumn. Daring new concepts will not be well received. Save them for the following Tiger year. 
Source: susanlevitt.com/astrology/metaloxyear2021/

So, yeah, I hope we can all just channel our inner Ox for a while. I believe that if we all can just stick with the program for a while longer, we will reap wonderful rewards by summer or at least fall. Wouldn’t that be nice?

I’m in! Hope you are as well.