Resolutions Be Damned!

It’s a new year. 2023. New beginnings! Fresh start! Brand new journal! Vision boards!

Be better. Be bigger. Be more. Do more. Reach your goals. Achieve your dreams!

Gosh, I’m exhausted…

What about just relaxing? What about just looking at the clouds? What about sitting under a tree? Dipping my tea bag? Listening to the weed whackers outside my window?

Why isn’t that enough?

I am so tired of the pressure to do more and be more and grow more. It’s an endless loop! The demands and expectations never seem to end. Every television commercial, every glossy magazine page, every social media ad. Everything in our culture keeps shouting:

GO GO GO!

DO DO DO!

BE BETTER THAN WHERE YOU ARE.

Why isn’t sitting in my living room petting my cat enough? Why isn’t carrying a shopping bag stuffed with groceries enough? Why isn’t waking up in the morning enough?

Every spiritual teacher under the sun preaches being present. Slowing down. Living in the Now. But it seems as if everything in us resists. Stillness is too quiet! Peace is too boring. The mind keeps shouting, Get up, move, do something IMPORTANT!!!

I once wrote a poem about it titled Call an Ambulance:

Stillness has gotten a bad rap.

The accusations are endless:

Uneventful.

Uninteresting.

Just too damn quiet!

Yet the hummingbird disappears

like a shooting star

right before my very eyes.

And the distant thunder,

like an atom bomb,

wakes up the whole sky.

If it got any more exciting

I’d keel over from a heart attack.

So here’s my spiritually correct/TV-infomercial-incorrect New Year’s resolution to myself for 2023…

RELAX!

For God’s sake, just relax! Just be who I am, right now, right here, puffy eyes, bad breath, stained tee shirt and all. 

Want to join me?