Another Year

I stopped making New Years Resolutions years ago when I realized that the part of me that pronounced intentions for the future was not the part that had to carry them out.

Perhaps it’s possible that by giving up entirely on that venerable tradition, of marking the beginning of another year in our lives and in the life of the world that we share with others, I was just killing the messenger. And who is that messenger? That’s the part of me that still hopes, dreams, aspires, and wants to believe I can learn from the past and keep faith with a world that provides the gifts from which I have benefited.

I’m just now noticing that the phrase, “New Years Re-solutions”, to stand for how we view the year to come, suggests that our task going forward is to “solve” the problems that are still hanging around because our previous attempts to deal with them have failed. That emphasis on solving problems is precisely why I stopped recording my intentions at this time of year. I couldn’t help but notice that each New Year’s list looked a lot like the previous ones.

I began to notice that the part of me that tries to fix things really doesn’t know how to live with appreciation and understanding, but is more concerned with driving the ship of my life in some direction that misses the hidden possibilities of the journey.

Could I use a different word—affirmations, celebrations, hopes, dreams, intentions—to evoke a way of marking the orbiting of the planet around the sun and the beginning of another journey in the lives of the beings who live here?

It’s probably not an issue of language. I’m feeling a kind of sorrow that I don’t have any ceremony that helps me remember what I care about, which could bring me closer to this living world and to the beings who live here with me. I miss feeling a vibrant connection with the minds and hearts around me who also feel that our humanity is as risk of losing the gifts that our ancestors worked so hard to create.

Life feels like a river carrying me along, and I have my own bubble out of which I look out at the passing shoreline and all the other bubbles. My desire to affect the river’s current and destination seems to have no real effect. Living my life inside my bubble, my opinions about the destiny of the river don’t seem to play much of a role in what happens.

I’m afraid of what the barges and leaking oil tankers are doing to the health of the river and to the life that relies on that health. Their fate appears to be under the control of captains who seem unaware of them and have little care for their quality of life.

So, what do I want for 2026? Who do I want to be and what do I hope to do?

I hope that, from inside my bubble, the edges of my private being can feel more porous, more permeable to the water that flows around me; while remembering that the river also flows in my veins and joins me with all that flows in harmony with the river.

I hope to remember that the river is not the leaking oil tankers, nor the ones who sit on deck counting empty tokens and dreaming dreams that create nightmares for the rest of us. Those are not the people I wish to know better, and in whose company I want to spend my remaining days.