Fresh Start

What is it about the end of one measurement of time - a year, a birthday - and the beginning of another that inspires us to take such earnest stock of ourselves? It is at these points we seem to reduce ourselves, our souls and our psyches, to a balance sheet, and we almost always seem to come up lacking.

The New Year’s Resolution ritual has become so predictable that the advertising market relies on it. As sure as Christmas follows Thanksgiving (in many countries), the torrent of New Year’s advertising follows the turn of the calendar page, showing us just how fantastic our life could be, if only we stick to our resolve to take up the quest of self-improvement. Products and their purveyors await, like alligators just off the water's edge, snapping at the steady stream of consumers seeking to cross the river to get to their better selves.

For some reason, at least in Western society, less is more, so the quest to lose weight is for many the Holy Grail. Women are especially susceptible to this notion: if only I were smaller, more svelte, less curvy, then I would truly be happy. Health is an important concern to be sure, but is it really health that motivates so many to be so much less, literally, than what they are? Or is the desire to be smaller the manifestation of a deeper desire to be bigger; to gain acceptance and a sense of belonging in a world that values a characteristic that so many believe they do not have?

“I will be more organized in the coming year” proclaims the disorganized procrastinator who has made the same resolution several years before. Seemingly doomed to an existence of chaos and tardiness, he professes to long for a life that is ordered and tidy; to live an alternate reality in which he fulfills his commitments and obligations to the smiles and approving nods of others. But does he really want to be organized, tidy and contained or does he suspect he is lacking something that these characteristics will confer?

We value the wild and marvel at the majesty of happenstance in nature. When it comes to humankind though, we are collectively less forgiving and seem to believe that, to butcher an old adage, there is a box for everything and everything in a box. There are many who seek, at the turn of the calendar page, to put themselves in a box. A tame walk to the guillotine, one might say, depending on your point of view.

There are thousands of “fresh start” resolutions. I will be kinder. I will be more patient. I will be stronger. I will be somehow...better. There are as many resolutions as there are people, because each of us has something that we have over time been lead to believe needs fixing. Something that we should be doing better. Something that will make us better than we think we are. Something that will make us easier for other people to take. All of these are the low hanging fruit; the symptoms of the deeper longing.

What if our fresh start was to be more authentically who we are all along? I will be myself. No qualifiers, no excuses, no apologies. What if we embarked on a genuine journey to accept ourselves for all of our imperfections; all of our weirdness; our foibles and flaws, and all of our fantastic-ness? What if we embraced the composite of our idiosyncrasies as the weird, wonderful, mysterious, engaging, funny, awkward, embarrassing, cosmically confused, authentic individuals that we are? What if we embraced ourselves?

We spend so much time seeking to be what we think others need, or who they tell us we should be. At what point do we learn to love and be comfortable with who we are?