A Fresh Start

I take an almost childlike pleasure in new, fresh notebooks with their blank sheets of paper waiting to be filled.  The first day of vacation is my favorite, with all the days stretched out ahead, full of promise and freedom.  I hold my breath during the moment in the theater when the lights go down and the curtain goes up, in the hush of anticipation.

I love fresh starts.

Why, then, this refusal to take part in the most iconic fresh start that exists –- the day that seems to cry out for innovation, for reinventing oneself, for swapping out the old bad habits for the bright and shiny new ones?

I’m not certain when I stopped making New Years’ resolutions, but at some point the ratio of “Guilt:Success” must have overwhelmed me.  I suppose the process went from fun and whimsical to an exercise in disappointment, and I simply stopped.

Everyone knows that diets can only start on Mondays, right?  Interesting then, that my most successful ones have started, say, in the middle of the day on a Thursday.  I quit smoking, after years of First-of-the-Month Monday resolutions, at a time and on a day that I can’t honestly remember -- sometime in August before my 50^th birthday.

I know this may make me sound rather curmudgeonly and dark, like someone who refuses to believe in the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny.  The truth is that most people who know me would characterize me as an absurdly hopeful person.  I’m someone who believes that good can come from the most surprising places and in wonderfully unexpected ways.

It may seem like a non sequitur, but I’d like to share a snippet I took away from a lovely little book written by the Dalai Lama, called “The Art of Happiness.”  I’m not quoting here, and he may not have actually written this in so many words, but as I said, it’s what I took away from the reading -- and I love it so much that I’m not even going to look it up, as it might ruin it for me.

I believe he said that we all have the choice, every morning, of waking up and thinking of those who have more than we have, and being unhappy about it –- or of thinking of those who have less than we have, and being grateful.  In short, happiness is a choice we make every moment of every day.

For me, resolutions are the same.  This year, I suppose my resolution is to throw caution to the wind and decide in the middle of the month on a Wednesday at 3 p.m., that I’ll carve out more time for writing.  Or that I’ll eat more vegetables, appreciate my husband more, find more joy in work, or call my mother more often.

I’ll make choices, every moment of every day, to be happy.  In that way, every moment is a fresh start.

And I do love fresh starts.

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