First Published in December 2013
We wear our best clothes. Parties. Drinks. Confetti. Noise makers. Crowds.
There is never anything wrong with our celebrations for the New Year. Our memories quickly melt away the good and the bad of the year that’s just about to end. We sharpen our pencils listing all of the things that will make our New Year great.
Such energy all packed in to experience and be part of the first minute of the New Year. The excitement of the experience intensifies our belief in the possibility of breaking through, of achieving so much more, of tackling the things in our life that seemed so imposing.
Our hope is so real. We want to believe it as being so true. It feels like our hope has such promise and substance that it “could move mountains” simply because it was part of the first minute of the New Year.
How could our hope be so real when the essence of life never changes? Why are we so fooled by the first minute of the New Year?
The rapid rush of adrenaline fueled by our hope for the New Year blinds us to some very simple facts. We pray for continued good health learning that how we eat and how often we exercise can influence our future health.
Listing our resolutions simply hide the necessity for us to make different choices, work harder, and possibly change direction to realize our celebrated resolutions boldly stated for the first minute of the New Year to hear.
The New Year does not change the fact that we hurt, we love, we connect, and we struggle. That there is an ebb and flow to life that simply includes some random tough patches that we all experience at some point.
Who we are, what we value, and what we hope for doesn’t change in a minute. Not in the first minute of the New Year nor the last minute of the year just ending. The New Year can never protect us from ourselves.
Celebrate the New Year with all of the energy, intensity, and hope that our traditions ask of us to follow when we participate. It can be fun.
Simply realize that, the first minute of the New Year should remind us that we are given more time for our efforts to get us to where we want to go. That is what the celebration should be about. Not celebrating our stated resolutions before they happen but rather that we are simply given another opportunity, after the first minute of the New Year, to keep trying.
Don’t be fooled by the intensity of the first minute of the New Year. More times than not, most things will take much longer than one minute. Being part of and needed, during those many minutes that we struggle to achieve, is always something we tend to forget especially during our weakest moments of celebration.