“We all have the tendency to struggle in our bodies and our minds. We believe that happiness is possible only in the future. That is why the practice ‘I have arrived’ is very important. The realization that we have already arrived, that we don’t have to travel any further, that we are already here, can give us peace and joy. The conditions for our happiness are already sufficient. We only need to allow ourselves to be in the present moment, and we will be able to touch them.” -Thich Nhat Hahn
I feel the pull of a new year, a fresh start, another chance, a reinvented me. It is shiny and sexy. It promises something better than what I have known before or at least it promises something different. The year stretches in front of me like a verdant wilderness. I’m the eager explorer, the brave pioneer, the hopeful discoverer.
Or am I just the restless wanderer, moving camp so often that I keep myself distracted by change and never have to sit with–really sit with–myself?
New Year’s resolutions have been a symptom of the not-enough disease for me in the past.
This will be the year that I master myself. This will be the year that I overcome my laziness, my sloppiness, my no-good lack of discipline, and my untamed body. Then I will feel alive.
Other years it has sounded like: I’m so close to where I want to be. I just need to change these three things, and I will arrive.
Year by year I have searched for a start that has felt right to me. I am a person who lives in continuous self-reflection and inward contemplation. I am always asking, How can I vigorously self-examine while also extending grace and compassion to myself?
How can I honor my natural tendencies while also recognizing choices I could make for greater health and growth?
How can I hold gratitude for the person I have become and also embrace my freedom to let go of any story I tell about myself?
How can I allow my future to open into the fullness of all it can hold while also accepting the present simply as it is?
I don’t want to approach the new year highlighting my deficiencies and all that is wrong, which is what resolutions usually did for me. I don’t want to pin my happiness and worthiness on the future. Instead, I want to see the endless goodness of all that is right. I’m tired of rigid rules. I want to imagine the gifts I could give myself, gifts that are already in front of me, ready for me to touch: gifts of joy, of wellness, of connection, of life rhythms, of presence.
I ask, What gifts invite me to touch the life that I have, not the life that looms just out of reach, always on the horizon? What gifts could I accept here and now, as the person I am today?
I’ve let New Year’s resolutions give way to New Year’s experimentation and curiosity.
How would I feel if instead of scrolling on my phone when I wake up I tried doing a yoga sequence for just 10 minutes? How would I feel if I tried setting up a monthly phone date with an out-of-town friend whose very presence brings me life? How would I feel if I planned out my week on paper every Sunday?
Would it be sustainable? Would it feel restrictive and confining? Would the constraint open into greater freedom once it became habit? Is commitment to this course where I want to focus my energy?
I thought I needed the resolutions because I didn’t trust myself to do good things reliably without commitment.
I didn’t trust myself to grow and evolve without outlined habits. So I signed a contract with myself. And over and over, I fell short, breaching contract and ending up layered in more shame about my inadequacy.
I used to think I failed my resolutions because I lacked discipline, which meant I was weak and unfit for the rigors of life. But when I look back and honestly assess my past, I see a different story of who I am.
I see a person who is resilient, determined, and resourceful. I see 31 years of life and experience that couldn’t make me believe in myself no matter how hard I worked. I didn’t learn it about myself as an adolescent when I served as the middleman and counselor in my parents’ failing marriage. Not when I healed myself from an eating disorder as a teenager without professional counseling. Not when my GPA topped a 4.0. Not when I lived through and escaped a long-term emotionally and sexually abusive relationship. Not when I was the primary caretaker of my grandmother in her last six months of life with terminal cancer while I was a college student with two jobs. Not when I taught sixth grade in a challenging critical-needs school outside the Mississippi Delta for two years while earning my Masters. Not when I managed the intensity of 21-hours of unmedicated labor to birth my first son.
I was an overachiever and a perfectionist. I never arrived. I was always striving for the next big thing and the next big me, feeling small and unworthy no matter how much I accomplished or endured. I always stood on the brink of the experience that would make me believe my strength and power.
Our culture prioritizes productivity and certitude. We want measurable results. We want charts of success. We want before and after pictures. We want linear growth. I’ve found this to be damaging for me and contrary to the deep senses I’ve been given to guide me. I was always pulled toward the shadowed mystery of the eternal but instead enrolled myself in a pass-fail way of living, swinging between oversimplified dualities. I haven’t felt richness living by this model.
Now I see that I am naturally resistant to easy answers, to formulas, to prescriptions, to blind continuity. It simply doesn’t fit me, and I can thrive without it. I am enough without it.
So I choose to approach the year with fewer rigid rules and more fluidity and curiosity. I am attracted to the nuances, the subtle shading, the white space of meaning.
I even give myself flexibility with the timing.
The manmade calendar doesn’t always align with my desires for change, transitions, and new life. In the middle of winter, I often want to cozy into the nest of comfort, not push myself to a new wakefulness. I let the slow shedding and the huddle of winter continue its work on me.
Where I live, the oaks continue to drop leaves until the end of winter. I’ve waited until the spring when the azaleas flash pink and the hummingbirds hover. Or the summer when the milkweeds call the monarchs. Or the fall when the acorns drop and the squirrels plant the next generation.
As I welcome January, I now ask myself, Do I feel like a reset? Is this a good time?
If not, I decide that I can reassess whenever I feel the fire in my belly for comprehensive self-reflection, dreaming, and intention-setting. There are seasons for soft repose and seasons for being shaken awake. They don’t always align with the calendar year or the turning of the seasons.
I believe in myself and my own seasons. I believe in my own timing of engaging with my values and priorities, reaffirming the ones that have persisted and reworking the ones that have shifted. And I believe in the enduring enoughness of unchanging me.
Maybe I am not shaping myself into better, more useful forms but rather am letting the winds of each year uncover me more, like sand being brushed off an ancient treasure.
I am already here. I have arrived.
Photo credit: Josh Hailey Studio
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