I'm So Over It

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about hope.

The end of the year does this to me.

I can't help but feel like a failure for not having achieved what I guess I feel I should have. Failure is actually a good thing, because it's not as though I haven't tried to achieve things. I have, and if I haven't gotten them, whatever strategy I used can be crossed off the list and not used anymore. Or altered in some way.

In yoga, we learn to be OK with everything as it is. But at the new year, suddenly there's all this anxiety about why we aren't further along in life. And decisions to be made about resolutions.

I'm not making any. Because they're stupid and they backfire and they make me feel like I'm at the starting point of a race with one foot stuck in the ground.

They remind us of what we lack. What we haven't accomplished. It's like going into the confession booth and having to talk about your sins.

I never really took to this practice.

I haven't done it since high school, when I had to. And even then I was never honest about what I'd done. Take that, Father Jerkface! No way was I going to spill the beans to some crazy random stranger telling me to be a better person and say a million Hail Marys.

The strategy with confession was to say whatever would yield the least amount of time with the priest. The longer you were in the booth, the longer the people behind you had to speculate about how awful your sins were based on the length of time you were being lectured.

Church breeds gossip.

I want to celebrate the anti-new year. Because at new year, we get hopeful that this is the year everything is different. But life is a wheel. Sometimes we're on top and sometimes we're at the bottom.

The wheel turns no matter what we resolve on new year or how we hope things will be. And because life is a wheel, there's no need to hope, because things will change no matter what we're hoping. And it's a wheel for everyone. We're all on the same wheel together.

Karma does not know it's January 1.

Hope is a double-edged sword. It makes us feel both good and like crap. Good, because it makes us feel like we can get what we want. Like crap because we're reminded we don't have what we want and might never get it. It's a sugar high. It makes us feel good in the moment, but then we crash.

Detachment from hope is freedom. You don't need to hope if you know, with certainty, all is exactly as it should be in this moment.

And we all already know this. Which is why we say, the grass is always greener on the other side; careful what you wish for, you just might get it and that kind of thing.

We shouldn't be strong-armed into hoping just because it's new year's, and that's what resolutions are - wishing things were different.

I'm not making any. I'm not looking back at my failures. I've already thought enough about them. I'm not looking forward to what my life should look like next year.

I'm not hoping for anything at all.

Hope is a weight. It makes us wait. How long have you been hoping for what you want? Long time, right?

When we let it go, we're light.

That's my new holiday, "It's All Good - Leave Me Alone Day." No resolutions. No special meals for good luck, prosperity, whatever. No wishing, no hoping, no hand-wringing, no list-making and certainly no confessions!

What holiday would you make up?