Did you do it? Did you make those same 5 resolutions for the New Year? Exercise, write every day, no sugar, stop slouching, pay the bills on time. Is this the year? Will you actually do it? Are you ready for a makeover, a new reality? The Biggest Looser? The Bachelorette? The Next Iron Chef? What will you do? Who will you be? What will you walk away from, begin anew, choose, risk, change?
Here’s how you start.
Make a list. Draw or paint or color a picture. Listen to Sam Cooke. Get a haircut. Talk to an old friend over tea and toast. Meditate, or just pretend to meditate. Buy new underwear. Look for signs. Touch someone. Touch yourself if no one’s around. Eat vegetables. Be kind. Forgive.
The last one is really hard. It’s a lot harder than it sounds. You can let go of things, let time slide by and not think about them, forget them, carry on with conversations, daily rituals, a peck on the cheek, a joke, a call home, a yoga class. But it is not the same as forgiveness. Forgiveness is the onerous work of accepting flaws and faults and mistakes and cruelty and indifference. It is cracking your heart wide open, letting shame and fear bleed out, reaching parts unknown and dangerous, wounds long ago scabbed over.
It does not mean you are a doormat. It does not mean you let people crap on you. It means you understand. It means, to use an overused new age term that brings a little vomit up in the back of my throat sometimes, but nonetheless seems to fit, you are grounded.
So forgive me, and I will forgive myself for taking so long to write a New Year’s post. I am already putting 2013 instead of 2012 on my checks, so the year has turned the corner. But I offer you a new look for my blog (it’s a pretty standard template but it seemed easier to read) and a new page tracking the books I read in 2013. I am focused on my physical health this year, as 2012 brought a few setbacks. I am also trying to make a change, although I’m not sure I can even define what that change is. It feels big though. Like Eat, Pray Love on crack, minus the movie deal.
Hope you hang in there with me. Hope you have a few of your own tectonic plates shifting around inside this year, bringing you change and hope and forgiveness.
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