I’ve often wondered why we start the New Year in the dead of winter, rather than in the spring, when, at least in the northern hemisphere, life seems to burst forth with new energy.
According to the science website EarthSky, there is no astronomical reason to begin the calendar year in January. The custom dates back to the Romans, who established the calendar we still use today. They set the New Year to begin in the month of January, which celebrates the two-faced god Janus — one face looking back into the past, while the other peered forward into the future.
Many of us today still make use of the New Year’s period as a time to reflect back over the accomplishments or challenges of the year just past, and gather our energies and focus for the year ahead. The idea of New Year’s resolutions is certainly born from the wish to set our face to the future and do it right this time, in the new beginning afforded us by the turn of the calendar wheel.
On my blog, Transition Times, my New Year’s post was about my desire to take my cues from Mother Nature in thinking about how to set my priorities and intentions for the coming year. Nature likes circles, spirals and borders, not straight lines or strict demarcations. For the natural world, the equinoxes mark the boundary lines between seasons, but there is no single day of the year when everything is reset and starts anew.
I’m thinking that I should take this as a model for my own way of being alive in this world. There is truth to the old adage, “Every day is the first day of the rest of your life.”
Every single day, not just January 1st, affords us the opportunity to become more aware of how to give happiness to ourselves and to others. Every day is an opportunity to walk a path in alignment with our core values, to become truer to the loving, laughing, light-filled beings we were born to be, and to spread that light and love out in the world.
We cannot know what the future has in store for us; 2015 is sure to have its share of struggles and sorrows, along with joys and achievements, like every other year.
All we can do is resolve to live each day fully, aware of how precious life is and appreciative of the people and places that bring us joy.
We can embrace each morning as an opportunity to re-center ourselves and readjust our Janus faces, honoring the past while at the same time turning resolutely and with spirit to the future.
NOTE: Readers are invited to share their stories of “Starting Anew” at the January 11 meeting of the Lean In with the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, a monthly gathering of women writers hosted by Jennifer Browdy and Anastasia Stanmeyer at the Shaker Dam Coffeehouse and Stanmeyer Gallery in West Stockbridge. Visit our Facebook event page for more information.
The weekly EDGE WISE column is curated by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D., associate professor of comparative literature, gender studies and media studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and the Founding Director of the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers. Women writers interested in publishing in EDGE WISE can find writers’ guidelines on the Festival website, or may submit queries or columns to Jennifer@berkshirewomenwriters.org.
