A New Year is Here
Happy New Year!
At this time, a week after the celebration of Christmas, we find ourselves gearing up for one more round of parties, celebration, and perhaps some deep reflection and quiet contemplation. And we carry on a tradition of making , what many people call, New Year’s Resolutions.
I was pondering this word on the night of the solstice- when the light begins to return for longer periods than the darkness- and it dawned on me (no pun intended!) that the evening of the solstice felt more like “New Year’s” to me than anything. A new year was beginning for me that night, as the darkness would be given less time to linger, and the light would be filling our days moreso. What a great way to think about how we are moving into a new chapter in our lives. The chapter of 2010-
But the meat of what I got to pondering, on that cold, crisp night here in Minnesota, where I live… was the word “resolution”; what’s with this making new year’s resolutions stuff? I find there is a lack of feeling and motivation behind this word, resolution.
I wondered how many other people hear that catch-phrase and imagine the plethora of topics that are common in our country: eating healthier, going on a diet, losing weight, getting in shape, paying off debt, quit smoking, quit drinking, quit this, quite that, stick-to-this, follow-through-on-that, etc. These things can sound like such a CHORE! And then it hit me: the very word itself, resolution, implies there is something to be resolved, and if something is to be resolved, then we must first have a “problem”.
Well, I don’t like the word problem. When we take into account the Bigger Picture, I feel that here, there are no problems. A problem is a matter of perception. They are just a sign-post that something is simply out-of-whack in our mind and our heart, and thus is spills forth into our outer lives. So we must bring it into the light, where it will be TRANSFORMED, brought back into alignment, and returned to us as a fresh perspective, a right outlook, a new energy that will fill us and point us in the direction of where we would like to be going.
After all, nothing can truly be destroyed, extinguished, or ended. ALL is energy, ever changing, in a state of flux, shifting and moving and altering form as it naturally evolves or as we come along and perceive it and project our energy onto it. So it’s not that bad habits need to be cut out of our lives- in fact, this can prove to be quite difficult! Going “cold turkey” just usually doesn’t work that well. But if we offer it to the Light, it will be transformed and shifted in the way that is most effective and perfect for us.
We are not here to resolve our lives or “fix” the world- WE ARE HERE TO TRANSFORM IT.
And Oh! What a grand opportunity that is.
May you know that you,
right here, right now,
are FULLY EQCUIPED to do just that-
you need nothing more than your firm intention to let the changes begin.
You are that powerful.
And it is so.
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Angela, thanks for this post. I agree with you, the solstice does feel like the new year, I also think the word ‘problem’ is better not used, along with words like ‘I hate’, ‘I need’, and other negative words. We need to watch what we say because our unconscious mind is always listening, and words do carry weight. This new year resolution business is such a commercialized non-personal and non-realistic way of approaching life, I guess that is why most people do not keep these resolutions. This year I made no new year resolutions at all, my life is a continually changing/improving journey, every day is a new day, a birthday or a new yr, every day is a day for improvement.