We’ve a tradition in our home, something we’ve done every year for the last decade or so, something we’ll do for the next 4 or 5 to come. Every New Year’s Eve, we shuffle our tarot cards, we fan them out, make 3 nice piles, restack them as our intuition guides, and we make one pile. New.
Then, Sarah and I put them out, 12 cards in a circle like a clock, one in the middle of them all. This is the year that will come, say we, each month a card to show us what could lie ahead. We read of each, we imagine the seasons changing with the card presented, we wonder what it could mean, we guess, really.
Something struck me, when thinking about this tradition, when thinking how nearly any tradition on the eve of a brand new year, they are all aimed forward, all aimed at what will come and what will be. Last week, we discussed the importance of sitting in the small hours of light, the long hours of dark, and allowing yourself to drift internal. Today, I want to go a bit further into that, and today, I want to invite you to learn what I have learned in all these years of pulling tarot cards in candlelight just before the clock hits midnight and we begin again. Really, it’s simple, and really, it is this:
We must let go in order to go forward.
We cannot lay the cards without clearing the space, we cannot make room for what will be without emptying ourselves of what was. In doing this, one thing, one truth, stands out taller than the rest to me:
There is such weight to all we’ll leave undone, there is such a heft to all that will stay incomplete. We must set it down, we must, we must, we must.
Solstice was for being present, for sinking into that feeling of where you are, who you are, and how you feel. It’s for using the dark to find your own light, as only in the shadow can we notice shine. The ending of a year is for eyes of two directions, back, and forward, accomplishment and regret, future hope. This day is that day, and we cannot find that hope without first severing the ropes that tie us to all we’ll never finish. Not this time, not this year. This day is for understanding that it’s ok to move on, and it’s ok to stop forcing our shoulders to carry the weights of all we convinced ourselves we must complete.
Every single one of us, at some point or another, wrestles with this feeling of being unfinished. Be it business, be it opportunity, be it goals not yet realized or even resolutions from a year ago this New Year’s Eve, we are burdened with what we never quite resolved. Hell, I wrote a whole book of poetry about this, The Never Was, and in the writing of it understood that sometimes remaining unfinished is beautiful. Sometimes, letting go is the art that hides within.
Not everything can be finished, not everything will be complete. The art of living is the art of trying, the joy is in the attempt. We can put ourselves to what we do, we can devote what we can to what we do, but if we anchor ourselves only to the result, to the finality, more often than not we will be disappointed.
I propose, on this eve of an eve of an eve to the EVE that will be, that we shift our focus. Now, let us let our eyes rest not on all that is not done, but on all that is, all that can be. When we focus on the first, we completely lose sight of the latter. We sail right past the shore we’ve been so desperately searching for, we end up lost at sea and once again making our circle around the circumference of a globe bigger than we can imagine.
Were I to ask for a raise of hands once more for all of you who feel the pressure of the great To-Do List of Life, I wager every hand would lift, all hands would find sky again. We are burdened by what we haven’t done, haven’t written, haven’t become, and we feel it more acutely at year-end than any other time. What if we redefined completion? What if we challenged every silly notion that all things must be finished to have value, that they must be perfect to be called complete? What if we found beauty in all that “Never Was” quite wrapped up?
I ask you to consider this: What if, what’s left undone is actually what leads us down unexpected, maybe even better paths? What if stopping reading the book that doesn’t resonate when we’re only a third of a way through is what frees up our time to discover the next great read that will define this month, in this year, of this life? What if removing the pressure to finish it all, especially at this turn of the calendar, emancipates us from something larger, something more nefarious that we’ve all been trapped inside for longer than we ever realized?
This year, to quote Oasis, Don’t Look Back In Anger.
Be gentle, friends, and instead of seeing all that was never “written” in your lives, see the blank pages that give way and make room for all you will write. The life you will spill out like ink and stain them with, every day you wake.
Soon we’ll be pressing our lips to another’s lips, we’ll be only moments from shouting out HAPPY NEW YEAR and we’ll begin again. We have to choose, and we can choose before it comes, how we venture forth into the year that will be. This week’s Signal Fire is a continuation of last week’s, it’s a plea and it is a reminder, to be still, to be gentle, and to make the choice I hope you’ll make.
We can go forward tethered to the anchors of all we’ve left unfinished, all we feel we let ourselves down with, or we can put our knives to the ropes still taut, and we can saw back and forth. We can cut them, we can hear their recoil and whipsnap in the cold dark air.
We can call it starting gun, and begin our race again.
Happy New Year my friends. I will see you next year.
Thank you, for you.
Heft of incomplete,
the weight of all unwritten.
We can set it down.
