One word, one feeling
Hello,
Happy new year! Happy new decade!
It’s a special time of year, this,
a time of holidays for many – or maybe a season of holidays when many of us are on holiday and those who aren’t are still infected with the feeling,
a time of change, or turning, of a new calendar year.
For many of us, it’s a challenging time, because traditionally that feeling of change, of turning, of a new story, a new calendar heralding new beginnings – is a trigger for resolutions to be, do have something better, something new, something exciting and alluring …
… or
the feeling I have had until recently of weary cynicism, that New Year’s resolutions don’t come true, that they are a waste of time. Continue as you were. Gyms love this time of year because no-one turns up after the first few months, despite paying for a full year. People lose interest in all their good intentions and sink back into the mediocrity they saw in their previous year, losing faith in self.
I’m not sure what changed. Probably it was the fact that over the week of Christmas our beautiful little grandson and his parents spent every day, at some point each day going to an emergency department with really severe croup – a worrying and challenging time, and it was such a relief for all of us to have him home, stabilising and improving. It is a joy to see him happy, energetic and breathing normally! And back came that feeling that I have not had for so many years – a new year, a new beginning, a new chance. I’ve been thinking about that feeling in light of the cynicism I felt more recently. And I know I much prefer it. It’s the giddy feeling of possibility – absolutely illogical, but so freeing, so joyful, so hopeful.
It’s time to acknowledge my voices of safety that insist that past experience proves this is illogical and a waste of time.
It’s time to thank them for their efforts to keep me safe.
It’s time to understand why they want to keep me safe and to keep that in mind underneath the bubble of possibility.
But if there’s one word, one feeling, one emotion I want to enjoy today, take into the days and weeks and months of this year and this decade it is that feeling of possibility – alluring, light, buoyant and uplifting.
Yes, of course, there are problems, always will be, disasters, challenges, grief – always.
But if we want to remain resilient, if we want to bounce back, if we want to maintain hope in a world that threatens to drown us with its greed and war and hate and sadness, then we need that feeling of possibility.
We need the logic, we need the safety, we need the reality, but without the buoyancy of that feeling of possibility, or the knowledge that it can be created, then our wellness suffers.
And of course, we are wired to look for the problems, to look for the challenges, to test for hurt or fear, or grief, because that scanning keeps us safe. But sometimes it can be just too habitual, needs an alternative.
If we can turn it on, that alluring, slightly giddy feeling of hope and possibility with just the arbitrary turn of a calendar page, then we can turn it on again, on any other random calendar day.
Ask the safety officers to step back.
Take the focus away from the problems, the challenges, the fear and the grief and allow them to simmer in the background
Possibility allows us to let imagination, creativity, and spontaneity run free,
Answers are born there, new possibilities, not just new goals but ways to approach the old ones, new possibilities for action, for doing, for being.
If we can feel it, whenever we are reminded that beautiful things happen; if we can feel it just as the calendar turns,
then isn’t it time we looked for those reminders, we found them for ourselves and we found them for others?
Isn’t it time to indulge, sometimes, at those times when there’s disasters, challenges, fear and grief?
So I’m making that feeling, my word, my inspiration, my motivation for the coming future – possibility.
