HEART BEAT: Happy New Year, and Then Some

By Felicia Mitchell

If pressed, I’ll say I have one resolution for this New Year:  to wear more blue.

Along with this resolution, I have more complicated goals.  Some of these involve service to others.  Some relate to personal goals.  I know I will succeed in achieving my goals for service.  As for personal challenges, they may require another millennium, but I’ll try.

The nice thing about a new year is that it gives us the ability to start over.  I love to start anew.  Don’t you?

Well, no.  Not everybody loves to start anew.  I think we do, generally, only when there is choice, when we get to make a list that affirms a sense of control over our destinies.  When you have to start afresh for reasons outside your locus of control, it’s harder. 

For example, if I were living a little farther south near the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee, I wouldn’t be relishing an opportunity to start from scratch after what has been called the worst environmental disaster of its kind in the United States breached my backyard. 

Losing a home to a toxic spill practically on the verge of Christmas Eve is not what most of us have in mind when we think of opportunities to take stock and start over.  Worrying about the effects of the coal ash on the environment, even if one’s home is salvageable, sort of preempts any ordinary worries about exercise, weight loss, and other New Year’s resolutions.

If there’s a lesson in the disaster, other than the revelation that it might be nice to take a second look at other options for storing coal ash, there is the truism that there is no time like the present.  Why wait until the New Year or an environmental disaster or a health crisis to forage for reasons to plot changes to your personal life, the environment, or society in general?

Truth be told, New Year’s Day does not always fall on New Year’s Day.  The Mayan concept of time was so intricate that there were multiple calendars, with overlapping beginnings and endings.  Astronomers mark a year with the Julian calendar, which points to the sun and the stars and the universe that holds our polluted earth in its arms. 

Earlier this year, Jews observed the start of the year 5769.  December 21, Winter Solstice, many celebrated a new beginning.  December 29, Muslims celebrated the Islamic New Year: 1430 AH.    The Hindu New Year fell on October 29 this year, heralding Vikram Era 2065.  The Cherokee New Year is marked by the Harvest Moon each autumn.  The Chinese New Year won’t arrive until January 26.

There are more calendars, many more, almost as many ways to divide time as there are shades of blue.  Why put so much energy into resolutions and goals just one day of the year?  Each and every day is the beginning of some sort of new year.  Every day is always the first day of the rest of your life.