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WAIT!! Did we really get to New Year already? Apart from the fact that this year has gone at both light speed and at a snail’s pace, I have to admit that I am honestly shook. I am super proud of us for making it this far and I wanted to take a moment to say, “YAY US.”
It’s no easy feat to make it to this point. A lot is going on in the world and we need to appreciate that is has not been easy for a single person, even if it appears to us that their grass has been exceptional green.
This is something that I have really had to remind myself of this year because comparison is the thief of joy and I have done a lot of that to myself this year, spending a frustrating amount of time in bed unable to go to sleep, thinking about all the ways I am not good enough, but I can promise you that this is a waste of time for us.
Now if you are anything like me, New Year is probably the time you get caught up in the most moments of comparison because everyone is talking about their Christmas and New Year plans and you are probably thinking, well mine isn’t going to be anywhere near as cool.
Well same babes. I plan to be falling face first into a pizza, praying, eating some ice cream and going to sleep pretty much straight away. This is the second year in a row I’ll be doing this (no regrets), but I know before I go to sleep I’ll scroll through insta and wonder why I am not going something exciting like everyone else.
That is absolutely no way to enter into a New Year and I refuse to do that anymore, and so I want to talk about what New Year really means to me.
I’ve been thinking about what New Year really represents. Apart from the passing of the time, the moving from one year into the next, the making of resolutions, starting over, the setting of goals and the feelings of starting again, does it mean something more?
I think it just might.
I’ve always viewed New Year as this really individual thing. I have to make it special. I have to set goals. I have to make resolutions. New Year in my head has always been about me and trying to make myself better and so much focus on me is probably why it’s always been my least favourite celebration because let’s face it, how much can you focus on yourself before you start to see all the cracks you’ve been trying to seal all year.
We’re encouraged socially, and very much so by the media, to make sure New Year is something we never forget. We are pushed to jump on as many bandwagons as possible. We become demographics and marketing targets. We sign up for as many things as possible in the bid to make ourselves better people. We hungrily look for meaning in our lives and we drive ourselves into the ground come January to be the best, disregarding all the other issues we might be refusing to deal with.
It all becomes about me, myself and I.
You can be this, you can be that, you should do this, you should do that.
Exhausting messages hit us from every angle and we pile ourselves with our own impractical standards and bars to meet; and in the process I think we miss the point of New Year entire.
I think the point of this change in season and year, is to connect us.
Why else, as the ball drops and the clock chimes do we have this unmistakable desire to want to turn to someone to shout, laugh and cry and embrace?
Perhaps it’s because truthfully we are meant to be spending New Year connecting to one another. Maybe we are meant to spend time with the people we love, our family and our friends and our partners; and if we don’t have those things, maybe we should be spending time seeking out our community, like minded others who can become our tribe and families?
Up until now New Year has always been about me and what I want and what I need, but this year I’m going to do something different. As well, as being internal and searching for what I desire internally, I want to reach out and be external. I want to connect more with the people close to me, and the people who aren’t.
I want to spend more time thinking about others and not just myself. I want to know other people’s stories. I want to give back to my community and to the world we are blessed to live in.
So that’s what New Year means to me.
It means not being alone, because we don’t have to be.