The old year has passed and we commemorate it while invoking the illumination of the year’s days of authentic indulgence, simplicities, celebration and closure.
As we welcome the new year, we need to put the old years unfinished business — mistakes, regrets, shortcomings and disappointment behind us, bad memories as well.
We will make some discoveries, as we keep on a look out for soulful markers that surround us, savoring the stops along the way. These are what make the journey marvelous, meaningful and memorable. As you find and honor your own pace, stirring your mind, body and spirit, through the parting of the mists where faith and doubt meet; we will find, not who we are — but what we are.
We honored the old year with a farewell toast, welcome the new year within: offered thanks, and celebrated how far you’ve come, how much you’ve learned and the glorious person we could become.
I am not fazed by cynicism and betrayals. I will sprinkle it on my oats, add it as a boost to my Ensure. It keeps me young. But for a week more, I will put all that on hold. Forget the cynicism, those that give you grieve. Feed them to the alligators! If you’re sad at New Year’s you really have only yourself to blame. Candles, firelights and bubbling wines can keep your heads above them.
I will laugh when I hear favorite lines gleaned from beaujolies, savaged only by the twisted wisdom of my colleagues. That pointed out that there were different rules for old women with money; I vowed that one day there’d be one.
Happy New Year— it’s time to conceive new dreams and plans, overcome old fears and old pain, to experience that freedom, discover new strengths; that, oh, so sought goal. The new aspirations, new challenges…and grow old. I shall from invisible tbe vibrant…older is happier.
I let the pine tree live on that Christmas morning that came and gone. I threw open my window on a bright, delightful and shining world for the 80th time.
The bustling street falls strangely quiet. The living room rests, ankle deep in an effluvia of ribbons, papers and bows, empty cardboard boxes that held presents.
In the background, Tchaikovsky gives the evanescent joy of music into a yearning heart.
I will make every day my favorite day of the year, fill my heart with gratitude, strive for simplicity now that the holidays are over. The child of laughter and contentment has arrived…that which rivals the hues of the peacocks and the harmonies of heaven.
It is also impossible not to think of the homeless today. And I settle some into little boxes. Thousands and thousands of years ago, another homeless family depended on strangers’ charity and kindness. They didn’t find any until an ordinary, harried, exhausted woman stopped long enough to feel her heart tug. Mine now tugs with guilt, that a basket and presents we’ve dropped off to a shelter, eases up the sting a bit. But I am disappointed and saddened that I didn’t and don’t do more. I will this year, I promise.
Sometimes, I keep them with well-intentioned promise, but most of the time, real life distracts me. I don’t do enough, and I know it. But it does give me a happy pause wondering whose New Year’s dreams come true.
We offered thanks, celebrated how far you’ve become, how much you’ve learned and the glorious woman you wish and could become. It is always easy to see the beginning of things, and harder to see the end. It is always harder to cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves.
I don’t really know what I’m waiting for. I only know that until I have gained what I want from life, my expression of gratitude and joy will be restricted to a nip in the air that clarifies the scent. I’ll begin exploring the richness of seasonal soul craft…let my wind off into natural marvels, with rituals revolved around savoring, reaping, enjoyment, restoration and reflection.
I’ll glance at the sun, and see the moon and star. When was the last time you star gazed? Looked up into the night sky and realized that you’ve got a friend up there? That everyday in another day to follow the clues for the promise of the new year?
Revel on relinquishment, by letting seasonally sanctioned sojourns of slow joy, by transforming not only our own lives, but the lives of those we love.
Make the pursuit of happiness real and personal. NOW.
***
E-mail Mylah at [email protected].
