This “New Year” thing got out of hand around 2000 years B.C., believe it or not. Here’s the skinny –
“The earliest known New Year’s celebrations were held around 2000 B.C. in Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq. The celebrations were religious and lasted up to 12 days. The Babylonians celebrated the new year, called akitu, on the first new moon after the vernal equinox, which usually fell in March. The festival marked the time when Marduk, the Babylonian sky god, defeated Tiamat, the evil sea goddess.”
My, how times have changed. But wait, maybe not so much. Growing up in Montana, I always knew it was New Year’s Eve, if for no other reason than gun shots were nearly always heard at the stroke of midnight. There was much drinking in the bars, kissing and fighting. Maybe not so far removed from the festivals in Mesopotamia.
And here we go, yet again. A time of renewal? A chance to restart, be better, do better? Well, it used to be. You’d think we’d all be born again, with all the pomp and gravity we mark the occasion with. In truth (sayest the grinch, with an evil grin) it’s just another day. A number changes, a month changes, another 12-month cycle begins, but aside from that, almost nothing tangible. It’s the momentary leap from the bottom of an old calendar to the top of a new one. That’s right… just another day. If you don’t believe me, ask the Chinese. They have a far different concept of a new year, and when they think it comes.
I guess it’s okay to have a reboot once a year, and celebrate it. I doubt it’s very effective, however, especially if you measure it by our resolutions, and how long and how well we stick to them. I hear that two weeks is the average. Pretty much ends up being the same old world, resolutions or no, new year or no. There are many profitable institutions, all over the world, there to help us with resolutions that we cannot keep on our own.
I used to make a new year’s resolution every year. Then, somewhere in middle age, I realized that I never kept them, and that the only thing a New Year’s resolution did for me was give me a shot of guilt every time I broke the damn thing. The way to stop that ugly and useless guilt trip? Why, stop making resolutions in the first place. Which I did.
Well, I guess that’s not quite true. In recent years I’ve begun to think about what I would change if I still did make resolutions. It almost doesn’t count, because it has been always the same thought… that I need to lighten up next year.
Tightened Up? Lighten Up!
Lighten up, eh? Curious. Why? Why did “lighten up” become so important to me at the end of the year? Easy. Each of the preceding years has brought enough problems and stress to leave me tighter than a camel’s ass in a sand storm by the year’s end.
You see, like you, I know all about stress, about its causes and about its consequences. It can be deadly if not handled, if not released from time to time. And over the years I came to realize that so much of my stress was about things I couldn’t do anything about, thereby being an incredible waste of time and energy.
Now it’s supposed to be easy to distinguish things that matter from things that, ultimately, don’t. Yeah, it’s supposed to be easy, but it isn’t… especially if you are emotional at all, or are engaged in any way with an element that is causing the stress. Even just caring about something or someone can begin the slide down the slippery slope of stress. So if I really need to “lighten up,” does that suggest that I might also need to stop caring? That just can’t be right. It’s not right, and it’s not me.
Okay, it’s starting to look like I need to be more selective in what I care about if I have any hope at all of loosening up. You’d think that, after 81 years, I could easily spot problems beyond my control and simply, and immediately, not care about them. God, it sounds so simple! The truth of that matter is, however, that our mind can not only stress about problems that are out of its control, but can even manufacture hypothetical problems, those nasty little “what ifs” that we can’t seem to resist, let alone control.
It’s such a nice, almost innocent idea, the idea to loosen up next year. And I’ve found that, so far, it’s been impossible to do. This might be the result of life just messing with me, pulling my strings, hitting my hot buttons occasionally. I’ve often felt that was the case. And right there might be a possibility of some success for resisting many of those stressful situations. For if I can somehow “personalize” each potential stressful emotion as it arises, and immediately treat it like a person who is messing with me, perhaps I can begin to ignore it, not respond to it, and simply let it go. Now wouldn’t that be grand?
Yeah, like him…
Maybe I should break down and make this a new New Year’s resolution. Um, nah. It wouldn’t last a week. What I can do, however, is be aware of anything that “tightens me up” and immediately screen it for relevance to the health and well being of me and mine, or rather something I couldn’t possibly do any thing about, or even remember in 3 months’ time. For even though the “New Year” is nothing more than a change of a few numbers and the name of the month, still it brings with it, at least in many of our minds, the wish and hope of new, better, different. And, after all, isn’t that the new mantra of the American consumer?
Anyway, here it is, the new year. We might as well go with it, as it’s ingrained in us and in our culture, and hey, there’s fireworks! So what the hell, I might even try to lighten up, one more time. Perhaps it’s as simple as keeping a closer eye on my give-a-fuck-ometer. Why not? It’s worth a try.
Steve Hulse
