“….Why it’s time to drop the ‘new year, new you’ BS—and learn to accept yourself. Once you radically accept yourself and your reality, you are able to focus on what you can control and start moving through life…” (Read full article here)
— Dr. Wendy Oliver-Pyatt, from “Why it’s time to drop the ‘new year, new you’ BS—and learn to accept yourself” (Fastcompany.com, 12/29/21)
Notes: Calvin & Hobbes via thisisnthappiness & Peteski
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter…
I feel my boots trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart pumping hard…
I want to be light and frolicsome…
and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.
— Mary Oliver, “Starlings in Winter” in “Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays”
Notes:
I pause to check the milkweed, and a caterpillar halts midbite, its face still lowered to the leaf.
I walk down my driveway at dusk, and the cottontail under the pine tree freezes, not a single twitch of ear or nose.
On the roadside, the doe stands immobile, as still as the trees that rise above her. My car passes; her soft nose doesn’t quiver. Her soft flanks don’t rise or fall. A current of air stirs only the hairs at the very tip of her tail.
I peek between the branches of the holly bush, and the redbird nestling looks straight at me, motionless, unblinking.
Every day the world is teaching me what I need to know to be in the world.
In the stir of too much motion:
Hold still.
Be quiet.
Listen.
~ Margaret Renkl, “Still” in Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss
Photo Credit
So, let’s back up the bus a bit and set this up. It was a New Year post titled What’s Your Spirit Bird where Margaret Renkl explains that “There’s a New Year’s tradition among bird-watchers: The first bird you see on New Year’s Day is your theme bird for the year. Your spirit bird.”
So, I’ve seen many birds since Jan 1, but not my bird. Not the right bird. And I don’t want to hear from you rule-sticklers that it’s not keeping with the “first” bird rule.
And the mind slips off the rails to a rabbit trail in Gail Honeyman’s” Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine: “I don’t need anyone else — there’s no big hole in my life, no missing part of my own particular puzzle. I am a self-contained entity. That’s what I’ve always told myself, at any rate.” No Hugely Holes. Not Bigly anyway. Trump’s infiltrating the mind. God, I do have problems. Bigly problems. OMG. Help me.
Monday, was, a long day. 7am flight to Dallas. 4 hour flight. 5 hours on ground. 4 hour flight back. 4 hours of sleep. (I don’t know if this math adds up. Who cares?)
And then, it’s Tuesday. I’m sitting in the warming hut waiting for a off-peak 10:00 am train to Grand Central. Light snow is falling. Darien Schools have closed for the day. 2-3 inches, and the world stops these days. (When I was young, I used to walk to school in 2 feet of snow – I’m sure, it was in bare feet, I was that tough. Snow days? WTH is that? The world has gotten soft.)
I shift on the steel bench, the train is scheduled to arrive in 4 minutes. I flip through my messages. And out of the corner of my eye on the ground in front of me is movement.
I lift my head.
And there she is. Has to be she. Just has to be.
Sparrow. Fluffy. Furry. Staring at me. Me staring at her. Spirit Bird? You? [Read more…]
I sit at the kitchen table preparing to read the NY Times. I separate the front section from the rest of the paper, and then pause.
I get up, go to the fridge and grab the remains of yesterday’s leftovers.
I turn to the Opinion Pages, my first stop, and scan the titles. My eyes spot an essay by Margaret Renkl. I’m a fan-boy of Margarets. I see that her piece is titled “Spring is Coming“…well that’s a bit aggressive on January 5th, no Margaret?
I read on.
“There’s a New Year’s tradition among bird-watchers: The first bird you see on New Year’s Day is your theme bird for the year. Your spirit bird, the bird that sets the tone for your encounters with the world and with others, the bird that guides your heart and your imagination in the coming year. It’s hardly a serious ornithological exploration, but there are plenty of birders who will wake before dawn anyway, no matter how late they stayed up on New Year’s Eve. They will drive off to some wild place teeming with avian life, all to increase the sunrise odds of seeing a truly amazing first bird. Who wouldn’t love to be matched for a year to the spirit of the snowy owl? What a gift to be guided for 12 months by the soul of a Bohemian waxwing!”
I pause.
Yea, OK, it’s January 5th, it’s well beyond New Year’s Day but there’s no reason I can’t find my bird now. I need my spirit bird Now.
I stop nibbling on my sandwich. Get up. Step out the back door, watch, and listen.
Silence.
I wait a few moments longer, in my short sleeve t-shirt, in 38° F temperatures.
Nothing.
Perhaps some encouragement. Come on Red! Where’s that Red Cardinal? There are four bird feeders in the backyard. All hang on their poles silently. No breeze. They don’t swing. They are Still.
Nothing.
I step back into the house, pull the sliding door closed, and finish up Margaret’s essay.
No Bird. Wonder what that means.
I reach for the remaining quarter of my sandwich, and look down…
Chicken Sandwich…
What a gift to be guided for 12 months by the soul of a Bohemian waxwing!
Photo: Ostdrossel
First day back after 2 weeks off…Sunny side up and Easy, way over easy…
Photo: Slowdown Studio (via Swiss-miss)
And now for “27 ways to feel bad about yourself while the last piece of Christmas pudding you’ve ‘indulged’ in is still making its way through your intestinal tract…”
As the new year dawns, you’ll notice that without ANY space to breathe whatsoever, what was once a newsfeed saturated with sequins, pints and party platters becomes one bursting at the seams with resistance bands, Nutri Bullets and all manner of “New Year, New You” rhetoric. If that works for you, great. If it doesn’t, keep on reading…
So, if you insist on resolving to do something, do this: go easy on yourself, be your own benchmark for success. And think about the kind of lifestyle you want to live. Happy New Year.
~ Caroline Foran, from “6 reasons I no longer subscribe to ‘New Year, New You’ BS” (Mashable, January 1, 2019). Caroline Foran is a journalist and a best-selling author of “Owning It: Your Bullshit Free Guide to Living With Anxiety” and “The Confidence Kit: Your Bullsh*t-Free Guide to Owning Your Fear“.
Take a breath…
Don’t swallow the sun
The moon isn’t bright enough…
I promise I’ll be a better person this time next year.
If you’re reading this…
Congratulations, you’re alive.
If that’s not something to smile about, then I don’t know what is.
― Chad Sugg, from “Swallow the Sun” in Monsters Under Your Head
Notes:
Today I want
to resolve nothing.
I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold…
– Kim Addonizio, from “New Year’s Day” in Tell Me
Notes:
Day 1, 2017.
A morning for reflection, lallygagging, and awe of a poem written by Stanley Kunitz: “still-wet words…scribbled on the blotted page: ‘Light splashed …’
Still-wet words. Light splashed. Wow.
Sun beams pour in through the window, light splashes but does not lift this load…God, it’s so warm under these covers. How about reading, watching movies, and remaining horizontal?
10am. I need to exercise. Now! Sigh. What a state of mind on Day 1.
Mile 1
How about New Year’s resolutions? How about Not? You’ve long since given up on Resolutions. You know the loop. Commit. Attempt. Renege in less than 30 days. Then self-flagellate for the remaining 11 months. Who needs it? Really?
Mile 2
I appreciated the punch line of Try a New Year’s Revolution: “I will work toward better days for myself…May Januarys be about self-acceptance, not self-improvement.” LOVE THAT.
Mile 3
“May Januarys be about self-acceptance, not self improvement.” I don’t think I can do that. I don’t think I can “do” self acceptance. OMG. I’m on another doom loop. This could be harder than setting New Year’s Resolutions. [Read more…]
I had gone back again to my little house and stood up on its roof and wanted to see a good end in all that and to find a good beginning in myself. And now, let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been…And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been…
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to his wife in The Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke: 1892-1910
Notes: Quote – Anne Sexton Appreciation. Photo: DistantPassion
letters swallow themselves in seconds.
notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
so much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
i begin again with the smallest numbers.
quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things i didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
– Naomi Shihab Nye, “Burning the Old Year” from Words Under Words: Selected Poems
Notes:
Notes:
[…]
Ocean, alive.
Earth, alive.
Sky, alive.
Air, alive.
Love, alive.
and here I was standing in front of another new year,
very much, alive.
And for the first time ever,
I could actually sense it,
in each one of my bones there was a whispering,
‘it’s going to be a good one,
dear.’
~ Sarah Norrad, A Poem to the New Year
Credits:
The time has come
To stop allowing the clutter
To clutter my mind
Like dirty snow,
Shove it off and find
Clear time, clear water.
Time for a change,
Let silence in like a cat
Who has sat at my door
Neither wild nor strange
Hoping for food from my store
And shivering on the mat.
Let silence in.
She will rarely speak or mew,
She will sleep on my bed
And all I have ever been
Either false or true
Will live again in my head.
For it is now or not
As old age silts the stream,
To shove away the clutter,
To untie every knot,
To take the time to dream,
To come back to still water.
~ May Sarton, “New Year Resolve” from Collected Poems, 1930-1993
Notes:
letters swallow themselves in seconds.
notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
so much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
i begin again with the smallest numbers.
quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things i didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
– Naomi Shihab Nye, “Burning the Old Year” from Words Under Words: Selected Poems
Notes:
If you haven’t read Kent M. Keith’s The Paradoxical Commandments, it’s worth a few minutes of your time. If you were looking for the origin of these commandments and the connection to Mother Theresa, look here: The Mother Theresa Connection.
In my reflection of events in 2015, I do find the commandments paradoxical. Let’s take a few highlights for a spin.
KMK:
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
DK: You are on a JetBlue flight. The woman sitting next to you in Coach removes her shoes, her stockings and then places her feet up on the seat in front of you. She wiggles her chubby toes to air out her dogs. (In case you were dying to know, she had a nice pedicure. The toenail polish was a pretty baby blue matching her fingernails. And there was no visible toe jam.)
KMK:
Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
KMK: Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
DK:
You come home from work, its late, it’s been a long (very) day. You are eating dinner, alone. Your head is down. (Important to note: Head Down.) Your spouse of 30+ years looks over from the couch, sees Gaps, and asks if you’ve considered Rogaine. You lift your head, your mouth is full – you try to validate if you just heard what you think you heard. You chew. You swallow, and then ask: “Excuse me. I didn’t hear what you said.” She repeats it crossing the “Red-Line” of no communication during the first 10 minutes of the King’s decompression zone. You reel from two scuds to the chest, elect to drop your head down with no response and finish your dinner. For the next 123 days, you start your day each morning staring at the mirror assessing the speed of the backward march of your hair line. [Read more…]
Live & Learn 