two questions for the new year.
Hands down, my favorite quote to usher in a new year is this by one of my favorite poets, Rainer Maria Rilke:
“And now we welcome the new year,
full of things that have never been.”
How exciting! New slate, new sky, new moments to lean into.
2012 was a year. I created an online teaching business that help me stay true to my intention to travel less to help Tess. She was diagnosed with Asperger’s and John with cancer. We learned what true community and true giving and true receiving is. Emma turned 20, leaving her teenage years behind. We transitioned my mother to a nursing home and Tess from school to unschooling. There was a lot of pain and unknowing in 2012, and a lot of learning. It was a year of transition and of change.
2012, I loved you in all your complexity. I loved you for helping me re-prioritize, for helping me learn how to receive, for showing me how to walk into darkness and befriend it. I loved you for showing up to teach me things I deeply needed to know. I will look back on you with great admiration for all those lessons as time moves forward. With appreciation, I say goodbye to you.
I get a lot of questions about goal-setting for a new year. I don’t set goals; I only ask myself two questions at the beginning of a new year:
1. What do I want to let go of?
2. What do I want to create?
Note to self: The answers to question number 1 are sometimes even more important than the answers to question number 2.
I’d love to hear your answers to those questions as we embark on this whole new year, full of things that have never been. Leave your answers in the comments below–we have much to learn from one another in community. Let’s use this space to have a dialogue about things that matter to us.
1. I want to let go of people who are toxic to me, whose energy depletes my own. I want to let go of belongings and clutter and weight, the things that weigh me down.
To help your own journey, if you’d like to receive a brief, meaningful inspiration everyday in 2013, sign up for my free “Daily Rock” emails.
Love,
P.S. If “letting go of fear and procrastination” in order to “write more” are your answers, my next VerbTribe starts on January 3rd, and can help you do that. If letting go of old stories about your body or about food in order to “become bendy” or “healthier” or “lighter” surface for you when answering those questions, Becoming Bendy begins on January 8th to help with that. I hope you will join me for one of these transformational journeys.
(image from Tokyo: “Shogatsu (or Japan’s New Year to you and me) can be a quiet and solemn affair, with thousands of Buddhists flocking to various temples and shrines to make an offering and hear the temple bells ring out 108 times around midnight.”)
