Happy New Year!
At some point this month that greeting won’t be appropriate, but I feel it’s still okay this early in 2017. Before you know it the holidays will be forgotten, your bills will need to be paid and your resolutions will be tested.
Speaking of resolutions, did you make some? Is that a tradition you honour or despise? Is it a source of pride or failure? Do you share yours publicly or keep them private? If you do share, who do you share them with?
Some years I make them and others I don’t. If I were to provide you with a firm declaration, one way or the other, you could rightfully accuse me of being untrue. Not that I wouldn’t be telling the truth, there just isn’t a truth to tell.
But I certainly will not, could not, mislead you to believe that I don’t do a ton of thinking about the future when it comes to the new year. I think it’s a combination of time on my hands and the celebration of holiday milestones, magnified by the interaction with friends and family. The media also plays a big role. Year in Review articles. Best of lists. Top ten tributes. Lives lived memories. Forecasts. Predictions. Speculations.
You would be a fool or a lover of Russian government not to look back at 2016 and suggest that was a normal year, it wasn’t. In terms of global turbulence, I think it was a ride unseen since 2008. The world would have to end very early in January of 2017, which very well may happen, for history not to look back at MMXVI and not say that was the year the world turned in a different direction. If you felt unsteady on your feet, queasy in your belly and light in the head, I don’t blame you.
Depending on who you read, who you ask or who tweeted you last, the year 2017 is going to be the worst ever, the most dangerous ever, the most violent ever or the most reviving ever. But let’s face it, history, especially recent history, has proven to us that the forecasters, pollsters, economists, experts, political commentators and trend-spotters are so dramatically off the mark that they should all be sent back to whatever schools educated them for a nice giant refund, ’cause what they learned ain’t working.
I have no predictions for 2017. If I did have a brain big enough to make them, I am not sure I would have the confidence to shout them aloud. Especially when people are so quick to criticize these days, like I just did. But I do feel good about my upcoming year. I bet you do too.
Why is that? I think there is an interesting question to chew on here. Why does the concept of a new year so motivate us? Why does it empower us to believe we are supercharged? How come when the clock strikes midnight from 12/31 to 01/01 do we suddenly down a bottle of superpowers?
How come we don’t feel the same way at the beginning of a new quarter? Or a month? Or a week? Or even a new day? How about a new hour? If one tick of the clock can be enough to change our entire lives forever when the rollover of a calendar year is involved, how come the same can’t be said for a few seconds during any day that ends in a “Y”?
This new year stuff is powerful. It has its own industries. It has its own events. It has its own commentators. It has billions of loyal followers. It has one powerful brand.
Hopefully I don’t sound jealous, nor skeptical. It is not frustration or lack of motivation. It’s a healthy desire to bottle this power that I feel today and export it to March, tap into it in May, chug it in September and shower in it in November. It’s a clarity of vision and focus that seems to be missing at other items of the year. It’s a spring in my step that sometimes loses its bounce. It’s a perception that all my glasses are fuller by more than half, before the leaks spring wildly.
If I could figure this out, then perhaps I would have no shyness in sharing my resolutions. If I could find the map, then I would tell all of you where I am going. If I knew I wouldn’t fail, then perhaps I would be more resolved.
Do me a favour? Poke me in three weeks, three months, three hundred days from now. Remind me to reread these words. To roll them around in my mouth for a while. To lip them in front of a mirror. To sing them in a shower. To chant them in my head on a morning run. I think they would have a powerful impact on helping the new year me, be me.