So Fresh and So Clean

Corks have been popped, prayers have been lifted and lovers have kissed to the start of a new year! Aren’t you excited? Today is the first day of the rest of your life…a chance to resolve to make O-eight great!

Do you have your resolutions listed? Have you shared your catchy new year’s motto with your friends? For my parents it was be “Debt Free in ’93.” It was a motto that they were excited about. And similar to the start of years before, my mom walked around putting pennies in all the windows of the house. We ate our black-eyed pea potluck, which also included collard greens, sweet potatoes and some type of pork. All food lovingly prepared to bring us Southerners some form of health, luck or prosperity. We were hopeful, like always, that this year was going to be different. But by July I always stood wondering why there was a penny in my window. And when 1994 rolled around my parents still had debt, but they resolved to keep trying to be debt free, minus a cute little motto.

Me, myself, personally have never been one to make resolute promises that I start on January 1st. I don’t like to make pledges that I won’t surely keep. And I’ve always been of the thinking that when a decision is made it shouldn’t be delayed until…nor do I feel like taking a complete assessment of my life on the first day of a new year. Right now, I’m sleepily watching Jerry Springer try to understand the tangled webs of his lesbian guests who are now fighting over a man. I don’t know why I have this on, I’m so confused; but the fact is I’m not here thinking of ways to do more of this or less of that in the upcoming months. I’m remembering how everyone watched Springer once…ooh and before that Rickie Lake. Remember that? Times sure have changed!

And really changing times is the only thing we can count on in the new year. I never feel older right after a birthday, usually it is a few months later when something happens that I realize my new maturity. I feel like experiencing a new year is the same type of process.

Oh how I wish some of 2007 problems would just disappear! That the work on my desk, that I have been neglecting, wouldn’t be there tomorrow. The bills for services rendered in ’07 would be paid and forgiven by someone else. That it would be wonderful not to carry my past in industrial size bags (cue Erykah) into this new year. I think about how it really would be nice to start fresh and clean. To be born yesterday, if you will but without all the naiveté.

Newness can be realized in ways other than chronologically. When we allow ourselves to think about “this time last year I was…” “Back in the day I use to…” “I can’t believe that I would go to…” That’s when those wow moments occur and we can see the start of something different in us. Now that I think about it, I do have a few resolutions. I want my attitude towards some folks to be different, my heart to be more open and my view from here to be clearer.

Truly there is no greater waste of life than to start something new and not be changed by the process.

Happy New Year Ya’ll!

See You in Seven