Some of us, I guess, require a lot more than a simple list or a decision to make a committment to change. We feed off of the collective energy put into New Year’s Eve. It is an impressive display, isn’t it, creating a lot of momentum for whatever project is at hand.
But what if today was no different from the rest? What if the stroke of midnight meant it became Thursday as it has always been after a Wednesday? What then?
I posed a similar thought about this last year, somewhat skeptical that the ticking around a clock dial is going to change anything. My grief was still fresh, and I was looking at the throat of that first anniversary of my father and brother’s deaths. I couldn’t bear the thought of moving forward, away from those events. If anything, I wanted time to run backwards long enough to reverse, to repair, to restart. Not so much to change the outcome, but to stop the relentless march of days — the days filled with sifting through ashes, learning to live with the new awfulness of loss — stopping all that was my goal.
But this year, I do not dread the days as they slip by. Instead, as they do, I feel something sloughing off. An old skin, a heavy weight, some dangling chads. It still feels like loss, but there’s new skin underneath and new purpose. There is also the responsibility of work ahead, and the energy to do it — the holidays have turned to a bustle of returning to routines, cleaning up and getting on with things. With life. Reluctantly and rather quietly, but life reasserts and the calendar no longer pains me.
In the Persian calendar, the New Year begins on the first day of spring. The custom is to light fires and one large bonfire. One writes things down and burns them, then jumps over the fire: “My black onto you,” you say to the fire, “your yellow onto me.” It’s a bit early for Noruz fires, but in the calendar we use, most choose Jan. 1 and the few days after for this mental ritual of burning the old and starting anew. (My mother was fond of repeating, “ring in the new year!” though I always thought she meant, “wring in the new year!” New Year’s Day was often spent cleaning my room and putting on fresh sheets.)
Creatively, we do need thresholds, deadlines, passages and units of time to mark events. Moon phases, cuts on a stick, elaborate symbols on a clay tablet can also serve this purpose. If we didn’t have a calendar, we would make one. As a species, we like counting, measuring and recording things. Why not count the days?
At the same time I can say it is “only” one day, in a succession of days, it is also the turning of something into something else — a transformation brought about only by the clock, and if only it means that one writes a new number on checks, on date books, it is still new and different. And to count one more day means that we are here, drawing breath, and capable of doing something amazing in this day.
Do something amazing with your new day. What will it be? Read a book, write a poem, devise a plan, solve a problem, learn to knit, greet a friend, cheer along with your television friends, make art, make peace, make a baby, play music, laundry your best sheets and take a nap, make some brownies, taste life. Whatever you do with this particular brand new day will be in part amazing because that’s the kind of creatures we are. It is in our natures to be amazing, creative, wonderful and shiny. All of us.
If you do only one thing today, ask yourself this question: who benefits from you being anything less than the most beautiful version of yourself?
The answer will amaze and transform you, and the rest of us as well.
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