Whatever challenges this New Year may bring, we are on a journey of joy, not a voyage of drudgery, writes Elaine Ryan
Christmas has come and gone once more. We complain that the preparation for it starts far too early, yet invariably we find ourselves chasing around at the last minute.
My own parents recall the same sense of time racing past in the lead-up to Christmas and the last-minute preparations on Christmas Eve. How different time seems to move for children. I remember the countdown to Christmas as excruciatingly slow. The agonising wait between Advent candles, endless days before school holidays and even the longed-for sleep of Christmas Eve denied with the excitement of Santa’s imminent arrival.
Like most youngsters, my own children thought Christmas would never come but, as soon as it passed, they began counting the number of sleeps until the next exciting event, New Year’s Eve.
As a child, I waited for New Year’s Eve with almost as much excitement as I waited for Christmas. Counting down the minutes and seconds on my terribly sophisticated brand new digital watch, I held my breath as the dial clicked from 11.59 and 59 seconds to that bewitching 00.00 hour.
I could also watch the date change to the 1st of the 1st of a brand new year. It was thrilling. It required concentration and no blinking in case you missed the precise moment it morphed from one year to another.
We also had the silly superstition that repeating the words “white rabbit” three times first thing in the morning of the new month was a guarantee of good luck for that month. If you could manage to do this on the first day of January, you were guaranteed a wonderful year. This was no easy thing to do!
Torch
Between watching my new wristwatch, muttering “white rabbit” at the precise moment and hiding my torch under the blankets in case a parent happened to check in on the supposedly sound asleep child, I often missed my moment.
Somehow though, I always felt different at this seemingly magical time and was acutely aware that the New Year meant the endless possibilities and the promise of something exciting to come.
New Year’s resolutions were another important part of the preparation for a new year of childhood. These promises to work harder at school, be more helpful at home and stop biting my nails were considered much more binding when made on January 1st. My children’s resolutions speak to their optimism and self-belief in the ability to bring about changes in their own lives. As grown-ups we can lose that sense of hopefulness and become disillusioned when the promise of something better fails to materialise. We forget that we can be real agents of change in our own lives by resolving and planning how we can do better.
Although we may not achieve our ultimate goal, the simple act of trying accomplishes something. It is an affirmation that we are not settling for the absence of misery but actively seeking the presence of joy and wellbeing. Piero Ferrucci in What Our Children Teach Us suggests that a willingness to learn is the difference between a career as a parent sentenced to slavery and condemned to a life of neurosis or a voyage full of insights and joys.
This New Year we would do well to learn a lesson in hopefulness from our children’s resolutions.
We can remind ourselves that, whatever challenges this New Year may bring, we are on a journey of joy, not a voyage of drudgery.
There is plenty we can be discouraged about, but optimism and the desire to do better are a good beginning for January and may in fact create possibilities that last the whole year through.