Unfinished and Unresolved…Happy New Year!
In the northern hemisphere, New Year’s arrives just when a little encouragement to keep going through winter is helpful. The sense that we are collectively jumping off an edge into something brand new energizes, refreshes, emboldens us, at least initially. We may have opportunity around New Year’s to pause from our regular work and routines, reflect on the passage of time, honor the myriad cosmic orbits that carry us through our existence. A space for us to shout, as loudly as we like, about what it is we desire for ourselves, opens to receive us. We may set ambitious and soulful intentions for ourselves, or resolve to do or not do something with our time and energy in the coming year. We may call in one word: ease or peace or love or joy, to be the tone for the new year. My friend and colleague Kelly characterizes us as our most aspirational selves on New Year’s Day.
When we set our intentions or resolutions with an expectation of sudden transformation, we are likely to find ourselves disheartened or disappointed when a few days or weeks into the year, we find ourselves…still ourselves, with the same old habits, and the same old mindsets, and the same old challenges. This is not to indicate that we are incapable of growth and change. We are. It’s just that growth rarely happens over night. Growth processes require an enduring commitment to move through periods of certain failure, to pick ourselves up, get back on track and begin again and again and again.
What if we kept our intentions, and gave ourselves the space to express them imperfectly, without precision, at our own pace? What if we gave ourselves space to be the unfinished and unresolved projects that we are? What if we kept going, while accepting that we won’t get it all right this year, as was the case last year, as will be the case every year? We will slip and slide and make a mess and puzzle over what to do about it, many times over in 2023. And we can still do the beautiful, brave, kind, and caring things we imagine and desire for ourselves.
Enjoy some poems that have been good company to me in these first days of 2023.
Poem to the New Year | Maya Stein
There you are, as always,
approaching, approaching,
dangling like a mess of carrots,
playing your constant peek-a-boo,
inescapable as a virus
and suddenly the pressure is on
to make those final, hopeful amends,
reduce oneself into a slim, aerodynamic spectacle,
and finally, in a last-ditch, gut-clenching effort,
to morph into sudden, spectacular greatness.
As always, you are like religion.
It's hard not to want to please you.
But instead of a great leaping, evangelical stride
what usually happens is an evisceration,
me peeling my own layers, scrubbing the dirt off like mad,
demanding enormous things of myself at the end of December
I "forget" just weeks into January,
which is when the guilt sets in,
simple and cold and sharp as ice.
What I want, I suppose, is for you to be a little gentler
with your arrival, not so earnest and punctual.
Don't worry if you're late this time.
I don't mind if you finish your book, drink another cup of tea, sleep.
I'm fine, really.
Can entertain myself plenty.
Buy something nice, on sale.
Rent a movie.
Enjoy what's left in the donut box.
Stay out of the rain.
Keep myself dry and soft and happy
for a little while longer.
Mornings at Blackwater Pond | Mary Oliver
For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.
And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.
What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.
So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,
and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.
The Most Important Thing | Julia Fahrenbacher
I am making a home inside myself. A shelter
of kindness where everything
is forgiven, everything allowed—a quiet patch
of sunlight to stretch out without hurry,
where all that has been banished
and buried is welcomed, spoken, listened to—released.
A fiercely friendly place I can claim as my very own.
I am throwing arms open
to the whole of myself—especially the fearful,
fault-finding, falling apart, unfinished parts, knowing
every seed and weed, every drop
of rain, has made the soil richer.
I will light a candle, pour a hot cup of tea, gather
around the warmth of my own blazing fire. I will howl
if I want to, knowing this flame can burn through
any perceived problem, any prescribed perfectionism,
any lying limitation, every heavy thing.
I am making a home inside myself
where grace blooms in grand and glorious
abundance, a shelter of kindness that grows
all the truest things.
I whisper hallelujah to the friendly
sky. Watch now as I burst into blossom.
From Which It All Began | Bernadette Miller
Tell me, what would you do today if you knew your life to be a celebration of this world?
Would you stop to gather sunlight dropping soundlessly upon pines beyond your window pane?
Would you court dreams too wide for the container of consciousness?
Would you linger in the terrible beauty of uncertainty as if the fullness of the world depended upon your presence?
Would you cast your hopes upon possibilities that abide only in departure?
Would you become the motion of your song, losing itself in over tones of delight or despair
and returning, finally, to the stillness from which it all began?