Another New Year

     We are at the edge of two realities as this year is ending, and the next year beckons. There is a paradox about the two edges of time, old year and New Year. On the one hand, we have been here before, for each year of our life. On the other hand, we have never, ever been here before. The future lies before us mysterious, uncharted, dangerous, exhilarating, wild, and pregnant with possibility. Perhaps we should be terrified.

     Imagine that the ball in Times Square is falling and that the event, as always, is captured on television. We count down from ten to one, and then a phrase scrolls across the bottom of the screen: “Here be dragons.” This is what ancient cartographers wrote on the edges of their maps where the known world ended: “Here be dragons.”

     We master the fear of a new year specifically, and change, generally, by assuming continuities. This New Year will be pretty much like the old year, except when it isn’t. Tomorrow will be pretty much like today, except when it isn’t. The sun will rise again and again, and all will be well, except when it isn’t. We assume continuities because the prospect of discontinuities can be overwhelming.

     Joseph Campbell challenged the human fondness for continuities when he wrote, “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.” As we imagine our own path, as we move into the future, there are surely dragons that await.

     As we enter a New Year, the invitation is the same as it has always been: to act with beauty and courage. Aren’t these two qualities, beauty and courage, the essence of love? Can you imagine the world that would arise in the New Year, if beauty and courage became the rule of every heart and every land?

     We fear the external discontinuities, papering over them with the illusion of continuity, as we fail to notice and address the internal discontinuities.

     Unitarian Universalist minister Clarke Dewey Wells wrote, “We cannot enter the New Year smooth as babes, but we do enter as survivors, often enriched, tougher, wiser, and seasoned by life’s struggles, readier for the time to come. Our scars signal more than lamentation; not injury, but renewal, not grief but reconciliation, not ruin but restoration, not the old year’s accumulation of woe, but the New Year’s reality of healing, strength, and hope….”

     The biggest discontinuity is not the external changes with which we must all contend, but the internal changes that we willingly and boldly undertake in order for us to give birth to new life within ourselves. Who could go on and on with no pruning?

     Out of the beauty, courage, and love that you possess, what new growth is waiting to blossom in you in this New Year?

     Dragon, photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash