To people I care about, who I hope will know that I mean them.
Begins another new year. My smart-ass side says, big deal. Yesterday 2014, today 2015, change of just a date, madness, consumerism, conspiracy, group-think, empty lives...I quite like this smart-ass side of me. Sometimes it makes sure I'm not giving in to mass hysteria or social pressures of pretending.
But then there is this other dreamy, touchy-feely, life-is-too-short-for-being-smart side of me that says, "Lets play to this crazy fiction of the new year and use it as a chance to say what rules of normal behaviour in daily life disallow us to." Today, I am letting this side speak up.
So then, I want to first tell you that I miss you. Like really. But I don't say it otherwise because it can sound rather creepy. And uncool too.
I miss being witness to your life and you being witness to mine. I'm not saying that I wish we called each other up more often, for I know that life is happening in so many different ways to all of us, each dancing to a rhythm that is unique to his/her life, that to ask one to step out very often could turn into a tedious reporting ritual. That's not what we'd like to do to each other.
But when through an occasional call or mail, or in the odd but wonderful chance to see you again, I am reminded that you are the holy ghost in my life as I am still in yours, it makes me feel that though I have my own seat on this roller coaster called life, you can look out and see me and I can look out and see you, when we want to, and that's reassuring enough to know.
So the smart-ass side. You know how it scoffs at new year resolutions, "They're so mainstream. You need a new year for a resolution?" You don't. And yet a couple of days ago it struck me that if you look at it as a new year resolution instead of a new year resolution, then it starts to make sense differently. It is a reminder that I can be new, if I choose to be. It is a strange thing, familiarity. Parents that wait for the child they knew to come home. Friends that hope to meet the same friend that they said goodbye to many years ago. Lovers that claim they know each other better than they know themselves. And my own self that tells me I am this or that. An elaborate set of enactments to find, define and fix each other. So then when you change, it almost seems like betrayal.
But I am beginning to see the new year resolution as something that tells me that while my past makes me who I am, my present will make me who I will be. And so like a river that makes its path as much as it is made by it, I can be myself as I also make myself. It is liberating because it acknowledges that beyond a point it is futile to analyse and know yourself because the self is not a crusty, inflexible mould. So in that sense, new year resolution revealed itself to me as a modern day 'rite of passage', passing me from being to becoming,
Why am I telling you all this? One, because you've always listened patiently to my compulsive pondering over the stuff of life. And two because it concerns us- you and I. Because if a new year resolution means that both you and I can be new individually, then perhaps we can be new together. It could mean being excited at the idea of meeting the new in you as much as feeling warm in your familiar presence. It could mean not being disappointed when you do not confirm to my idea of you because I care too much for you to nail you. It could mean letting go where there was imprisonment, It could mean hope where there was cynicism.
So then, my new year resolution is to let the new in me come to life, when it feels the need to. And to gracefully accept, even welcome, the you I have not met as much as the you I know so well.
