Welcome back, or welcome to our new year! I for one am looking forward to the change. My last year saw too many loved ones become ill, friends, relatives, community members, that I'm sending out health wishes to everyone. This period in the year is one of my favorites. The fall is so hectic. School starts, and then there's Halloween, and then there's Thanksgiving, and then there's the super-crazed rush of the December holidays. Most years I can't wait for the last week in December. The energy shifts, and life is calm. People vacation, they stay home from work. January feels the same way for me, even though most of us head back to our jobs. Compared to the four-month rush unleashed in September, it's calm, unscheduled, and best of all, there's no narrative for January. It's not a festive month, there's no major holiday. There is a three-day weekend, MLK day, but it hasn't become overly commercialized yet, perhaps because it has been claimed as a day of service, not a day of shopping, banquets, or gift giving.
I begin January wanting to eat healthy foods. This doesn't last all that long, I'll admit, but it's the desire that counts, the sense of having had enough sweets, enough good wine, enough interesting food in all the social events of the last season, not too mention the past year. That's a feeling that I love: the sense of having enough. My friend Laura S often says that to say "I have enough" is one of the most radical personal acts we can name, these days, as we are so saturated with things. Right now, I have enough, and I like that. It's a good way to start the year.
I've also appreciated the trend of anti-resolution New Year's articles. Enough with the promises we make every year, break almost immediately, and consequently, feel bad about. No more plans to exercise more, eat better, and give more of oneself to the poor. These things will happen in the usual course of things, or they won't, but it's no use going through a formula, a ritual that turns empty fast. This idea has touched me. As we are immersed in things to acquire, we are also immersed in the self-help promise that we can always make ourselves better. This means we are constantly self-critical. After all, bettering oneself means you've turned a harsh eye and found your weak spots. Instead, let's catalogue what's good in our lives and our selves, and see where that positive step takes us.
My wish for the New Year--that people in my life stay healthier. 2006 was hellacious with bad health news, and it stepped up deeply in December. Each week brought several "this-is-bad-news" emails to my inbox, friends with cancer, relatives with cancer, friends' relatives with cancer. Good health to all. Odd, in my younger years I wouldn't have been caught dead wanting something so mundane as good health, or happiness, the traditional things we wish upon each other. I would have needed something fancier, more esoteric. Watching my baby in the hospital this summer, standing by my mother's hospital bed wishing her back to health this fall changed all that, seeing my father-in-law struggle to recover from a stroke, changed all that. 2006 showed me how vulnerable we are. It showed me how basics like health are the most important things we can have, and that everything pales beside.
So, health and happiness to all of us in the year to come.
I begin January wanting to eat healthy foods. This doesn't last all that long, I'll admit, but it's the desire that counts, the sense of having had enough sweets, enough good wine, enough interesting food in all the social events of the last season, not too mention the past year. That's a feeling that I love: the sense of having enough. My friend Laura S often says that to say "I have enough" is one of the most radical personal acts we can name, these days, as we are so saturated with things. Right now, I have enough, and I like that. It's a good way to start the year.
I've also appreciated the trend of anti-resolution New Year's articles. Enough with the promises we make every year, break almost immediately, and consequently, feel bad about. No more plans to exercise more, eat better, and give more of oneself to the poor. These things will happen in the usual course of things, or they won't, but it's no use going through a formula, a ritual that turns empty fast. This idea has touched me. As we are immersed in things to acquire, we are also immersed in the self-help promise that we can always make ourselves better. This means we are constantly self-critical. After all, bettering oneself means you've turned a harsh eye and found your weak spots. Instead, let's catalogue what's good in our lives and our selves, and see where that positive step takes us.
My wish for the New Year--that people in my life stay healthier. 2006 was hellacious with bad health news, and it stepped up deeply in December. Each week brought several "this-is-bad-news" emails to my inbox, friends with cancer, relatives with cancer, friends' relatives with cancer. Good health to all. Odd, in my younger years I wouldn't have been caught dead wanting something so mundane as good health, or happiness, the traditional things we wish upon each other. I would have needed something fancier, more esoteric. Watching my baby in the hospital this summer, standing by my mother's hospital bed wishing her back to health this fall changed all that, seeing my father-in-law struggle to recover from a stroke, changed all that. 2006 showed me how vulnerable we are. It showed me how basics like health are the most important things we can have, and that everything pales beside.
So, health and happiness to all of us in the year to come.