Open the Door, January 2021
A New Year! Yay! The world turns, change comes (as it always does) and Hope awakens. Let us each contribute to Newness in our world by opening to The New in our personal lives.
As I try to do this, I realize that the attitude of “letting go” of what’s past, as is often recommended, does not work easily for me. Instead, I’ve found it’s more powerful if I’m able to say, “This is finished.”
Perhaps you’ve heard of Marie Kondo’s book The Gentle Art of Tidying. Her power word is “Joy”: she holds an item in her hand and asks, “Does it give me joy?” If it fails this test, she gets rid of it. I find this does work, especially when I’m truly willing to be NEW. [If I feel sentiment about the object, I either burn it or bury it in my back yard.]
But here is more: There’s a theory that not only do we live many lives (“reincarnations”), but we may reincarnate, so to speak, even in this same body. We may shed our old self like a snake who crawls out of its skin many times, a new being similar to the old but the old is truly, completely, left behind. This image helps me as I try to allow myself to be new and sort and toss through stuff that keeps my past alive.
Here are a few thoughts I keep in my mind:
-Theevidenceof what is past should disappear. I say, “This is finished.”
-Trying to be truly open to newness, I ask “Is this object-of-the-past a way to hide from newness?
Newness can be scary but if we take the attitude of Alice in Wonderland and call it an adventure, then we add fun and vitality into the unknown and bizarre. We are strong enough to interact with whatever appears, and Life will carry us forward into learnings. Like Alice, we can choose to be bigger or smaller as needed, and we can ask questions when we can’t see a direction.
Let us open more than a window to peek through into newness: Let us open our DOOR and step over the threshold and BE in a new place! Let’s allow ourselves to stand in a new place and be unfamiliar even to our self!