It is important to know how to welcome a new year. A never experienced calendar year is always exciting! It represents a fresh start on life. Evaluating what the past year has been can be an invitation for improvement in the next year. This passage of time gives us the opportunity to release any stress from the past year. A new born trip around the sun allows us a reset to make this our best year yet!
In this past year, it seems many of us have experienced challenges of some sort or another. It appears that so many systems appear to be breaking down, from ways of life, social structures, durable goods and weather patterns, even to the make up of the very planet we live upon.
New Year – New Perspective
Back in my college years, I thrived on art classes. These classes taught me to be creative, to make new things, to imagine. Philosophy courses opened my mind to possibilities. I learned to contemplate, to analyze, to ask why. Because of these leanings, I have an imagining and questioning mind that always wants to ask how and why.
I’ve always thought that literally everything has a purpose. Why do we think we have so called bad experiences as well as the good ones? Are all these happenings guideposts to influence our actions? Sometimes it may be tempting to curl up into a ball and exclaim, “Oh, woe is me!” Perhaps we may want to tell the whole world, “Oh my, guess what just happened to me!” While these reactions might semi-soothe for a time, they are not constructive, long term solutions. These behaviors do not seem to serve us well. Maybe we would do better to examine why and contemplate creative and positive solutions.
On my art studio bulletin board is this quote:
Everything you can imagine is real. Pablo Picasso
What if, all together, we imagined that all situations given to us have a grand purpose? What if all situations were labeled not as good or bad, but as learning opportunities?
Along with the new year approaching, this is a potent time for other reasons. I formerly thought that when the winter solstice occurred that this was also the point when the sun began rising earlier each day. The sun rise actually happens later following solstice until early January. Here is a great site explaining the process, albeit from the viewpoint of the southern hemisphere: https://theconversation.com/why-the-sunrise-is-still-later-after-the-winter-solstice-shortest-day-77628 However, the total time of sunlight does increase the next day after winter solstice. I like to equate this time of experiencing and anticipating the lengthening of light to an uplifting time of incubation, of planning, of imagining what the new year could be.
Now I come to another quote upon my studio board.
Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it. Leonardo da Vinci
Let us use our time wisely. I welcome you to join me to creatively contemplate these times during the approaching increase of light. Just imagine the positive possibilities our new year possesses!
My blog post, HOP into the New Year!, may be just the icing on the cake that you need to successfully forge ahead into your new year. May you have the happiest of new years ever!
P.S. Just as I finished this draft, I was gazing out our kitchen window. A bald eagle flew straight over our home! This was a beautiful and timely reminder for me to welcome the new year with a 21 day gratitude journal. Back when our son was in hospice, my husband spied an eagle flying over our roof. Due to a writing I came across, I was inspired to do a 21 day gratitude journal during that time. Looking for gratitude when life was challenging was a life changing experience. A gratitude journal provides a perfect reset point for me to encourage looking for the good in things for the upcoming year! See Gratitude for Hard Times.
