We begin anew.
Step by step, we cross the dessert. We clamber over dunes, sand the colour of desire. Our shoes sink into the ground but we lift them up, one after the other. There must be a destination but we don’t have to reach it to stop, to gather our breaths and our wits, to rest for a while.
We remind ourselves we can always stop.
And when we are ready, we can start walking again. We begin anew.
That could be how we start a fresh year, we decide. To let go of what came before, particularly if it has been an annus horribilis. A cruel year.
Let us decide what our path is, from this moment hence.
Not with New Year’s resolutions, however; these are a tyrannical temptation, a terrible tradition. At best, they are a salve, reassuring us that we have put some thought into what we aim to achieve in the coming twelve months – as though it is the thought that counts and any subsequent action incidental, a bonus almost – and at worst, they are a form of self-deception, a demon at our back, reminding us what a failure we are for not losing weight or making more money or whatever we resolve to do.
That’s just it, isn’t it? There never was any true resolve. We recite a list of nice-to-haves, because they sound right and not because these are what we require. We do not honestly mean it.
To be fair, it’s not easy to begin, of course. Not in the first instance, even less so when this is the nth iteration. We tell ourselves that we have paused for too long. That we have hesitated and that we have lost. We feel the weight of a world of expectations on our shoulders.
It’s not easy to shrug that off, yet we must.
At times, we would like nothing more than to give up but we don’t believe that, not really. We cannot believe that because what we deeply trust the power of starting over; we believe we can always begin again.
We learn our lessons, as best we can. We find new lessons to learn, new things to fail at, and we fail faster and more often so that we may fail better and experience our lives – our brief span on this beautiful earth – more fully. To be wholly who we are and not what we imagine others might wish us to be.
We need not fret about what our destination might be; we will reach it when we do. Instead, let us begin with our journey in mind, counting every step as though they are precious gems, which they are, of course, for they arrive once and do not repeat.
We walk on, rediscovering our path with every inch, every mile. We begin anew.