There will be time for fanfare later. For now, let’s welcome the new year in stillness and reverence. In the quiet patter of squirrels’ paws on snow. In the pings of ice falling from the bowed flower heads of dried hydrangeas. In the rustling of bare stalks of fountain grass and cup plants, separated from their summer and looking forlornly lonely against a bare sky. Let’s enter this new year with peace and calm, in the way that most of us need a new beginning.
It often happens this way – the bombast and build-up to the end of the year holidays, filled with excitement and hype and mayhem – suddenly followed by the crushing silence and quiet of the break of a new calendar year. I find comfort in the quietude, as novel and disconcerting as it seems to be to many. People would generally be happier if we could learn to live and exist in these pockets of silence, instead of reaching for a phone or something to occupy the mind or the body. Why isn’t it enough to simply sit still and be alone with yourself? In that respect I’ve always been lucky. Being alone and sitting in a quiet space has never been a problem for me. In fact, it’s often my preferred mode of being.
Not to say that I don’t enjoy your company – oh you know I do. But I fear we are losing the ability to be in a place of comfort without a constant source of stimulation or distraction, and so many problems and issues arise when boredom breeds discontent. As a kid, every once in a while, o rainy days mostly, I would wail, ‘I’m so BOOOOOOORED,’ to my mother as she sat at the kitchen table studying or making dinner. I thrashed about and writhed on the floor to no notice or concern, and then it was out of my system.
I don’t think I’ve been bored a day since. Well, I’m sure I have been, but there’s something very powerful and true to the adage that only boring people get bored. When you can remember and imagine and dream and think, world upon world opens up to you – and if you can read, well, you can go just about anywhere and do just about anything. How one can be bored in a world where we will only ever be able to read but a small fraction of all the books that have been written is beyond my understanding. How could one ever be bored or feel that they’ve done it all with everything the human mind can conjure? A failure of imagination is a dismal failure indeed.
And so we open the brand new year with the space and the silence of a day kept in quiet. Even the space of a few minutes held in relative silence can expand into a portal that gives peace and calm to any hectic activity that might surround you. I’m a little more expansive about it, indulging in about half an hour of mediation each day, and taking the time to stretch and take a few deep breaths throughout the day, even when working in the comfort and peace of home.
A new year is the perfect time to clear the head, to make more head-space for nothing, to pause the constant barrage of information and technology and simply exist. In the moment. In the breath. In the life that we can still hold precious. And maybe we can begin again.
