Wednesday, January 6, 2016

New Year, Clean Slate


A Clean Slate                                      By Sue Cryer                                 January, 2016

The New Year.
All is shiny and new, at least according to the calendar hanging on the wall or popping up on our phones. Sure, appointments are scheduled and vacations planned. Uncle Stew’s 80th birthday is February 20th and Cousin Gwen is visiting in June. What we don’t have scheduled is the unexpected. We have been given a clean slate to start the year where that is concerned.
In fact, the new calendar is almost pristine in its uneventfulness. Page after page of white squares blur before our eyes as we anticipate a better year, a healthy year, a new year.
As we rip the old calendar off the wall, the pages flutter in our faces. Reminders of days we had no idea would be spent in remorse, fear, trepidation and even grief. The job we lost, the storm we never saw coming, an illness that had yet been undetected, the loss of someone dear to us. The questions linger in our minds. How did we get through that? Why did it happen? What should we have done differently?

Of course, there was elation too. Maybe there was unexpected joy in the news of a marriage or a new baby. Perhaps there was a new love in our lives, the settling of a financial hardship, or the return of someone we had greatly missed. All good reasons for elation. Yet, each event still causes nervous trepidation as the possible results trigger the fear of more changes in our lives.

For goodness sake, why can’t we just be happy? Stop worrying about what tomorrow or next week, month or year will bring? Well, we are human after all. Given a good size brain, free will and all that. We can never just be satisfied.
As a species, we crave more. We seek more. Not always in the wisest way. Just watch the news, open your newspaper, google, or peruse the posts on social media. Politicians posturing, extremists emitting, insensitive judging, privileged coveting, entitlement rising, terrorists plotting, and guns being drawn.
All because we are not satisfied. We need things. We want things. These things involve being bigger, better, stronger, thinner, healthier, and even happier.
Ah, some of those are positive things. We are human. We have free will. Keep watching, googling and reading. Families grow, artists create, good will spreads, cures are discovered, minds heal, nature rebounds, a view is breathtaking and sins are absolved.
So, adjustment can be beneficial. The new and unexpected may set us free from the worries of yesterday.
Is this true? Yes. I believe it can be.
I am sticking with that answer, because that is what my human heart is telling my human brain. Be strong. Be positive. Be flexible.
Most of all, live each day like it is a clean slate!