Has your anticipated 2018 calendar of events proven to be as erroneous and disappointing in it's predictions and outcomes as the Mayan calendar of 2012 was?
Were you hoping the new year would have brought you new happy things, changed your old habits, solved your cholesterol problems?
Were you hoping the new year would have brought you new happy things, changed your old habits, solved your cholesterol problems?
A calendar doesn’t have a caring soul.
A calendar doesn’t have goals.
It doesn't want to be an entrepreneur.
It doesn’t seek your approval.
A calendar need not worry about finances for it’s survival.
Nor does it worry about yours.
A calendar doesn’t have empathy nor compassion for your hardships.
Time is busy running the universe and confusing the shit out of all of us in the process.
It’s not concerned about your bills, your declining portfolio, your startup ideas, your disappointing friends, or your weight management issues.
According to the silly parties and wrongly scribbled check dates that happened a few weeks ago, I believe it’s 2018.
Yet all it is, is just another day.
Another ill-defined moment in time, in a string of ill-defined moments that we're simply breathing in, day after day after day, attempting to give both meaning and definition to.
It's really just 'Happy New Day', another daily at bat. Another opportunity. Either an opportunity to do things exactly the same, questioning nothing, mirroring our yesterdays, or an opportunity for operating differently. For living more courageously. For becoming more.
2018 will come and go, just like 2017 did. And just like the rest of us will.
To a planet who has it’s own, non-bias survival objective,
every living, breathing organism on Earth is sadly and inevitably mulch.
(Especially if you’re buried in one of those cool Bio Urn’s(®)and can become mulch to a tree of your choice. I think I'm gonna choose to be a grapevine so I can have access to wine at multiple points. But that’s another story altogether.)
What you do with your pre-mulch existence, has only to do with you and your mind’s willingness and dedication to manifest something different into it.
Set new standards for yourself. Work less, live more. Spread love and wellness. Do more for others. Whatever.
Within reason, you can do whatever it is you want. And by all means, have high expectations and reach for the moon. But don’t expect to be a basketball player if you’re 4’11”,250 lbs, and built like an ottoman. Critical honesty in your abilities, as important as high goal setting.
As we inched and clawed our tired, lethargic 2017 asses towards the ’New Beginning’, the ‘Happy New Year, it’s 2018!’ starting point, we created hopeful resolutions and wishlists that attempted to reinforce a belief in our future successes.
'I want to be this'er, and that’er. Make this much, lose that much.
Be more X, less like Y.’
The intentions were good.
But much like the flavor of a piece of paper wrapped bubble gum from the bubble gum vending machines, it rarely lasts.
But for a little while, we DID believe we’d do something life-shattering (or in my case, thigh-shrinking). Because as this collective energy ball (not the oversized Time’s Square Disco ball) of human thought got closer and closer to a new calendar year, while even though a somewhat fictitious one, there's always an almost palpable, positive, and transformative group energy in the mind's of so many people. It’s a physical train of positivity that we all hop onto, in hopes of an easy ride over to the self-improvement station.
At that time, we are all relatively thinking and feeling the same sentiments at the same time: Time for something positive, time for new energy, time for personal growth. New beginnings. Empty the closets. Both metaphorically and literally. Shed the bullshit. Do like Rumi said and drop the dead leaves (Although more eloquently ). Reach higher. It’s coming! We all feel it. So it happens. It begins to manifest because there's such a strong, collective inertia behind it.
Off we go. We start doing it! Look ma, no hands!
It’s happening!It's really happening!
It’s happening!It's really happening!
At least for a few minutes.
But sadly, shortly thereafter, the fade-off sets in, and after a few weeks of putting in the work, the majority of once gung-ho, 2018 party participants will casually creep back into old habits and predictable lifestyles.
And our previously clear and defined 2018 goals start to take on a more hazy, amorphous shape.
And eventually, so does our non-gym-going asses.
The show is over, the curtains closed, the 2018 magician has left the podium, and one by one, people start to walk away from the celebratory hoard. We start to disband from this collective group of higher expectations. Our cheerleaders all now back home microwaving popcorn. Or stringing pom-poms…or whatever it is cheerleaders do in their free time.
And once again, all of our too familiar self-doubting and personal sabotaging techniques start to rear their ugly heads.
But not to get discouraged!
No big deal that it's 2018.
It’s just a starting point number we made up based on Christ’s birthday.
The Jewish calendar says it's 5778.
Mayan calendar, 3114
Universe calendar, 13,772,983,654.
It’s rather arbitrary.
You can always make up your own brand new starting point.
It can be right now.
February 11, 2018, 11:08 a.m.
To hope the new year provides you with all the good shit you’ve ever wanted out of life, is arrogant to assume and hope that 2018 is this servant who comes strolling up to your bedside every morning with all the solutions to your 2017 problems laid out on a silver platter.
It’s not gonna happen. Nor will it happen in 2019. Or 2020, or 4012.
(I don’t know, maybe 4012. They’ll definitely have some cool, overly capable robot servants who could 3D-print you a bedside, silver plate by then. ).
But until then, it’s up to you. We live in a world where we still poop and flush it down a little watery hole, and have silly things like Presidents and #FLOTUS’s.
So the impetus to foster change will need to come from inside of you.
And it only happens from knowing you're the only one responsible for all your bullshit, everything in your life, and therefore, the only one capable of completely changing it.
Except for your eye color, texture, amount, cellulite, or lack thereof, (to hell with all of you with the lack thereof), talents or addictions, annoying laugh or blood type. You can blame or thank your ancestors for that one.
But all the other stuff, the personal hangups, wanting a healthier life, the attitude, the constant pessimism, the anger, jealousies, the shitty job, the boredom, the daily Ho-Ho’s, addictions …the list is endless. No calendar change will ever have the capability of changing
any of that for you.
Only you do.
Happy February 11th.
Go change something for the better.
