New Year's Wishes

We Have Magic to Make

Vintage Victorian Era Postcard Public Domain, from my personal collection.

Hello, Friend,

Looks like we’re going to make it through another year, partially scathed but still standing. (Sort of?) It’s already 2025 in some parts of the world, so some of us made it!

On this final day of 2024, I wanted to touch on the bigger picture aspects of a new year and what it portends. Every moment offers an opportunity for reset. We don’t have to wait for permission to start over. Still, the shared sense of turning the virtual page together is a powerful thing. It’s good to leave the painful past behind. Mindful resolutions, fresh starts, renewed dreams, frivolous wishes, heartfelt toasts, the intimacy of midnight kisses, the quick connection of hugs and high fives, the breathless anticipation of the countdown followed by the unbridled joy of the turning of the clock to the new year, these are all wonderful things.

We need them, perhaps now more than ever.

None of us knows, for sure, what the new year will bring. Life is a mystery, isn’t it? We’re co-creating reality and chaos is always lurking in the shadows. We can’t do much about that. I’ve often opined that chaos happens, and the shit is what chaos leaves in its wake.

The end of this year was a doozy.

Clean up on Aisle 9!

1911 Postcard, Public Doman via Wikimedia Commons

As the years progress, I find myself less inclined to race through my life in the endless pursuit of some elusive golden future. It’s good to have hopes and dreams, but it’s also powerful to embrace the uncomfortable, uncertain, imperfect now. There are no guarantees, our little lives are tenuous at best. They can be altered forever in an irrevocable instant. I try to find the good stuff…even in the shit. After all, shit makes things grow, even us-if we’re open to it.

The final act of this year may have presented us with a massive pile of steaming turds when we were hoping for a field of fragrant flowers, but as long as we’re still here, firmly entrenched in the moment while reaching tentatively towards the future, we can turn those turds into flowers with a little imagination and effort. Every time we plant a seed, fertilize and water it, carefully weed around it, patiently watch it unfurl as it reaches towards the sun, we’re reconnected with the miracle of being alive.

It is a miracle, you know. Just being here, even in the shit, is a miracle.

An odoriferous miracle, but a miracle nonetheless.

A Happy New Year, 1909 Public Doman Missouri History Museum via WikiMedia Commons

Here’s to the promise of a brand new year and being here, now, in this complicated and chaotic moment. Plant a seed at midnight, I will too. We have turds to spread and dreams to nurture and flowers to grow and magic to make, together.

Happy New Year! Forward!