At this point it has become cliché to say that New Years and the oft accompanying resolutions are cliché as well – perhaps even acknowledging this is cliché – and yet… here we are. As someone who has spent her life making and chasing one resolution after the next, I have deep and conflicting feelings on this topic – which, I have come to learn, is as it should be. I’ve been thinking on this a lot, this thing we do, this way we live. Our tendency to love absolutes, and certainty – our preoccupation with the all or nothing mentality, our affinity of black and white thinking. We long for magic pills, silver bullets, and simple solutions. We are obsessed with what can be quantified. We live in a world that offers all of this and none of this simultaneously and we do ourselves immense disservice by not recognizing that. That there is in fact, a sacred place and space for both, for all. Because whenever we give up something in favor of something else, whenever we choose to look at only one side of the story, whenever we think/speak/live in absolutes, whenever we refuse to examine the nuance of anything and everything we inevitably lose something vital along the way.
And so, resolutions, New Years or not, are neither good nor bad – they just are – we get to assign the value. Depending on where we are in our lives, resolutions can provide comfort and stability, or they can lead us down dark paths, causing us to stray further from ourselves. It just depends. New Years is neither a big deal, nor is it nothing. It just depends.
And it’s in that spirit that I choose to recognize this time – honoring that it is both consecrated, and simply another moment in all the moments that have been and all the moments to come. It is also in that spirit that I reflect on what I have learned over the past year, and make a promise to myself – a resolution – to continue down the path of coming home to myself, no matter how hard it is, no matter how hard it becomes. Out of all the innumerable explorations and seemingly inconsequential epiphanies of this past year, one is continuing to rise to my consciousness the most these days. And it is this:
I am complicit in the very things I fear the most and judge the most harshly in others.
I am complicit.
and
That recognition does not diminish my humanity, it does not define my spirit, and it does not turn me away from myself. Rather, it allows for deeper and more fruitful introspection and reflection. It opens the door to nuance in a way that had been closed to me before now.
In a world that seems to be getting harder and angrier with every breath and every uttered curse; in a world where humanity seems to be turning on itself, acknowledging that I am complicit sets right the way of things. Instead of clenching, I am unfurling – instead of turning to stone, I am becoming water – instead of continuing to walk the path of brutality, I am beginning to choose the path of gentleness – instead of being quick judge, I am learning to open my mind.
David Whyte has been a constant companion this year, his words have provided solace and joy. This stanza from his poem Still Possible (in the book of the same name) hums with the beauty and the potential of what lies just beyond the bend:
Yes, it’s still possible not to hold so tightly
to what you think is true, to bend your head
and assume humility beneath the eaves
of a still spreading sky, to feel in the rain
upon your upturned face, how you have
always been friends with the distant
horizon, no matter how far and how
faint its call.
Happy New Year friends.
May you let go of what you think you know. May you feel the rain on your face. May you realize how complicit you are. And in doing so, may you come home to yourself and be set free.
Selah~
Love it.