The Great Blank Slate

(This reflection is an adaptation from a shared fire service with Olympia Brown Unitarian Universalist Church)

The new year always conjures the image of a great blank slate for me. The beginning of a new calendar year is an interesting celebration. It seems to be an innate hope in our human psyches for a second chance, a deep desire to try again and maybe get it “right” this time. So, I asked everyone at the service yesterday to write a word on a white board of something they'd like to leave in 2023. Answers included: anger, negativity, judgment, resentment, guilt, grief, job, envy, craving, jealousy, ego, fear, loneliness and more.

It’s funny, but I’m a little annoyed at the last calendar I bought… it is an 18-month calendar. So, I didn't start a new calendar at the beginning of the year (and where do I find a calendar that starts in July??) I’ve been cheated out of the symbolic ritual of retiring the old, marked-up, messy calendar for a blank slate with all of its possibilities and potentials. I don’t know what all y’all do who use your phones!

We can all erase words on a white board to have a truly blank slate to work with, but we all know this is just a visual. We all know this isn’t any different than watching the ball drop on New Year’s Eve, singing Auld Lange Syne, toasting out the old year, toasting in the new year, and kissing the person you’re with. The fire ritual and the rituals on New Year’s Eve will not change anything unless we choose to change it.

If we truly want to start over, we need to work to let go, we need to change our attitudes and our thought-processes and our behaviors or we’re just like Einstein said, “doing the same thing and expecting different results.” (The definition of insanity, right?)

So, if we want to let go of some extra pounds, we know it isn’t as easy as wishing them away. We need to watch what we eat and be diligent about exercising. We may want to let go of anger and resentment, but sometimes that means talking through the issue with the person it involves, or maybe seeing a therapist.

I’ve had my own go-arounds with guilt and I can tell you that as many times as I’ve let it go, it has come back. I have to remind myself that, after doing what I can to repair any damage I may have caused, guilt does not serve me (or anyone else for that matter), and keep telling the bugger to be gone.

And, while there are some of these things that we truly want to leave behind, not all of them can be fully left behind. Grief, for example, doesn’t magically disappear, nor can it be willed away, but we can embrace a new perspective on grief in the new year, a way that perhaps will transform us in the process. Maybe it will be time to join a grief support group, or get a puppy, or start volunteering, or take a class. There are many things that can move us forward in the grieving process, bringing healing one baby step at a time.

What is true is that there is an energy of newness at the beginning of the year. And we can open to and embrace that energy with all that we have, allowing it to help us to leave behind the things that don’t serve our highest good, or the highest good of those around us (because one is directly related to the other). Then we can make space to deliberately and intentionally make healthier, happier choices.

Love & Light!

Kaye