Finally seeing the light of a brave new year
Fiona O’Connell
WE are on the brink of a new year. Though some folk around this country town might also be on the brink of a nervous breakdown, or a digestive one, after too many close encounters with family and festive feasting. Certainly, the shops now seem shockingly empty, as if there was some sort of overnight coup d’etat.
Which is partly true, given the regime of redhot resolutions is upon us. Personally, I love a fresh start. Maybe it’s a hangover from going to confession as a child, where you got to wipe your spiritual slate clean via a peaceful penance of prayers.
Cynics scoff at the possibility of change, quoting that old (roasted) chestnut about a leopard and his spots. But sometimes that’s an excuse to stay ensconced in our comfort zone. Especially as the fact is that — far from being unable to change — change is all we do from the day we are conceived, as does the world around us.
This is hardly breaking news, with the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus declaring that everything is in flux — though Aristotle reassuringly reminded us that change does not demand a dramatic overnight metamorphosis, but a gentle and gradual growth. We can even rely on our love of routine, since “we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit”.
Or as the AA mantra puts it, “one day at a time”.
Which is how some laudable locals have transformed themselves, building a new life by taking baby steps, with no fanfare or fuss. Whether shifting weight, ditching drink or rebooting their outlook, turning over a new leaf has turned their lives around in the process. Because although self-acceptance is crucial, it should not be confused with copping out. Apathy often masquerades as innocuous, yet it can bring others down too, via the nudge effect. This is especially so in the smaller confines of a country town.
Because sure, sometimes life sucks — but giving up on it is hardly a solution. Like that scene in Schindler’s List where a prisoner is contemplating ending it all by throwing themselves against the electric fence. Until another inmate advises them not to, as otherwise they’ll never find out what happened to them.
Indeed as psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl explored in Man’s Search for Meaning, what killed many in the camps was not the unbelievable brutality but the aimless uncertainty that prevented them from visualising the future. Books like The Power of Now rightly advise us to live in the present, but we do so best when we spend it making plans. For we feel good when we have goals.
Anyway, maybe it isn’t that we change so much as become who we really are, once we realise that our habits not only make us unhappy but are sometimes a result of manipulation and brainwashing by vested interests. We wake up and see the light. And even if we fail again, like a Beckett character, we fail better.
For tomorrow is truly another day.