Happy New Year, 2015!
Today there are some forty calendars used widely in the world; a handful used less broadly; some twenty others no longer in use. And fifteen or sixteen others proposed.
Britain’s, now deceased futurist and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, reminded us “The future is not what it used to be.” I contend neither are the past or present.
Those of us shunted about by the Gregorian calendar — the conceptual architecture within which we change, constrain and expand ourselves, and our lives — are in the habit of speaking of New Year’s resolutions. Making them is another matter still — so too the discipline of implementing them.
The root of the word resolution is “solv”. It means to loosen. In content, to loosen involves letting go, presumably to make way for something else — another thought, action, or way of being.
What if, in our pattern of making or not making resolutions, we actually let go of conceptual and psychological time. What if we loosened our grip on the imposed intent of others and our cultures? Of course keep your time-based agreements and responsibilities. Yet, I am reminding us to directly experience the experience of our lives: those moments for example of doing things we love…those engagements when hours pass in what we experience as seconds, minutes.
When we capitulate to believing our thoughts and psychological experience are the real things in life; when we confuse them with the richness of experiencing our sensate and energetic experience of life; when we believe them to be life itself, we miss the happiness and beauty ever present in the loveliness and fierceness of life’s lapidary. Actual experience is the substance of life!
The protagonist in the 1998 American film Lulu on the Bridge states “I’m tired of being someone else’s idea of who I am.” Whether the future is what it used to be, or what we long it to become, choosing direct experience over conceptual is choosing life; choosing to live by your own intent; being yourself – living genuinely your own life, and doing the things you love is a recipe for happiness in the New Year.
What else will come will come.
Wishing you happiness in your New Year!
Britain’s, now deceased futurist and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, reminded us “The future is not what it used to be.” I contend neither are the past or present.
Those of us shunted about by the Gregorian calendar — the conceptual architecture within which we change, constrain and expand ourselves, and our lives — are in the habit of speaking of New Year’s resolutions. Making them is another matter still — so too the discipline of implementing them.
The root of the word resolution is “solv”. It means to loosen. In content, to loosen involves letting go, presumably to make way for something else — another thought, action, or way of being.
What if, in our pattern of making or not making resolutions, we actually let go of conceptual and psychological time. What if we loosened our grip on the imposed intent of others and our cultures? Of course keep your time-based agreements and responsibilities. Yet, I am reminding us to directly experience the experience of our lives: those moments for example of doing things we love…those engagements when hours pass in what we experience as seconds, minutes.
When we capitulate to believing our thoughts and psychological experience are the real things in life; when we confuse them with the richness of experiencing our sensate and energetic experience of life; when we believe them to be life itself, we miss the happiness and beauty ever present in the loveliness and fierceness of life’s lapidary. Actual experience is the substance of life!
The protagonist in the 1998 American film Lulu on the Bridge states “I’m tired of being someone else’s idea of who I am.” Whether the future is what it used to be, or what we long it to become, choosing direct experience over conceptual is choosing life; choosing to live by your own intent; being yourself – living genuinely your own life, and doing the things you love is a recipe for happiness in the New Year.
What else will come will come.
Wishing you happiness in your New Year!