Of Resolutions

Hello,

It is New Year's Day.  It is 2013.  It is an arbitrary manipulation of time and space that imposes an order onto the world that has no religious, fiscal, seasonal, lunar, academic, or even social meaning.

The start of the Jewish new year, the Christian liturgical year, and the academic year in the majority of the United States of America all usually begin in September.

Lunar and seasonal changes are marked in separate cycles, none of which fall on January 1st.
January is in fact a word that comes from the root word/name Janus, an Ancient Roman god who possessed two faces looking in opposite directions to symbolize beginnings, endings, or transitions.  And as poetic as that may be, I doubt that it was geo-political world leaders that really had anything to do with it.

The "Fiscal Cliff" of which we have been inundated with rhetoric on both sides, seems out of sync with state governments and for that matter most corporations whose fiscal years end in June, not December.  But this "crisis" that has been so narrowly averted, really had nothing to do with what time of year it was anyway.  But it has acted, indeed right here in my own work, as a diversion from the real local, national, and global crises at hand.

The real crises in our world of poverty, hunger, homelessness, untreated mental illness,  untreated physical illness, access to affordable health care, clean air, clean water, safety, equality, justice, and the repair of so many broken systems that have failed to meet any of our truest needs.

Perhaps this can be more readily understood in less fatalistic sounding terms.

I, YOU, WE need to meet each and every person where they are.

Not where they want to be.

Not where you want them to be.

Not where they were.

And not where the limitations of a broken world might condemn them to.
For just as someone who is penniless, homeless or dying from an incurable disease, it is just as true that someone with billions of dollars could be perceived as limited and condemned to a life of avarice, narcissism, and profound loneliness.

Perspective is everything.  And that is our greatest gift.

It is our greatest gift as human beings to know what it feels like to live and breathe and walk on this planet in our own unique and individual experiences.  And we know that more than 6 billion people are doing the same thing every day.  

If we are to share just that gift, that gift of life experience perspective, I believe that we would transform our own pain, grief, and anxiety into a collective celebration that we are travelling this path together and we have survived challenges that have served to make us better than we were.

In the Northern Hemisphere this is the physically darkest and coldest time of our calendar year.  We need hope that this will change.  We know that it will, we have watched it happen time and again, yet still we need hope for longer, brighter, warmer days.  And even though there is no good "reason" for this time that we celebrate a New Year, I believe that there is this profound human need for hope.

So, we do what humans can do, unable to alter the physical realities of our universe, we commit to changing ourselves.

We make resolutions.  We resolve to do better than last year.  We resolve, meaning we analyze, answer, and determine to begin again and make what seemed difficult somehow easier.

We write down some ideas.  We plan a new diet.  A new exercise plan.  Education.  Religion.  Financial stability.  More and less of all that we found unsuitable about our past year's behaviors.

And I am no different.  I have thought about each one of those things, but I have decided to make a resolution that will require much more of me than self-control around sweets, or shiny objects in store displays, or whatever bandwagon I hear calling my name to come and join their party.

I resolve today, this 1st day of January, 2013 to forgive the people, places, and things that I believe have harmed me.

I resolve to meet each one of them where they are.

I resolve to share my gift of what it is to walk on this earth in the way that I do.

I resolve to listen to my own words and believe in the power and grace of a G-d that has already done so for me.

Happy New Year.

Be well, love your neighbor as yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

-Ari