There’s an old saying that you always come back to what you love. We’re standing here on the precipice of a New Year, all ready to arm ourselves in an armor of new resolutions. A series of promises we can stand as our sign of hope that this year will be the best one yet, the one where we reach for those goals that were impossible a year ago and hover now just outside of our grasp.
I’ve made these promises before.
Growing up, life was chaos. There was always something new, something different. Living on the road meant pulling on a new identity every time you stopped at a new town. Spinning the threads of your personality that would help you here and contouring them around the personality that needed to be shelved for a while. In the bush I would find my roots and a month later in the city, my graces. Every town had a new job, a new atmosphere and a new way of doing things.
My family reacted to this chaos with traditions. Little things that meant nothing to the rest of the world, but created for us the same stability that I’m told a childhood home does for others. Every year at Christmas we would sit (stuffed full of our weight in roasted deliciousness) and, swearing that things needed to change, we would share our New Year’s resolutions with each other.
From there it was a trial run. You had six days to try on your new armor, paying close attention to ensure that it didn’t pinch or strap on too tightly. To know whether the weight of these goals would be too heavy to carry and to see how quickly the novelty sliding off would tarnish the shine. If you made it to the New Year, you had a resolution. If you failed, you halved the difficulty and hoped for the best.
So here I am, without my family on Christmas and surrounded by more chaos than I’ve known since I’ve left home, full to the point of nausea and ready to make my resolutions. In 2017 I’ll start a diet and actually stick to it. Work out four times a week, be more motivated and act less like an airhead. Be more eco-friendly and work towards a zero waste household.
I still have a day to go, but in the last week, I failed at each and every single one of those resolutions. Normally I’d just be lowering the bar to easy in the hopes I’d make it at least a month but this year, for the first time in my life, I’m breaking the family tradition. I want to go back to what I love or maybe even forwards to what I love.
What 2016 has taught me more than anything is that love is easy. Liking things (or sometimes people) is hard, finding motivation to do the things you hate (even if they’re good for you) is nearly impossible. I have spent the last year of my life wearing that armor of resolutions and punishing myself when it doesn’t fit. It’s made me constantly push harder, trying to do better and I’m exhausted.
This year I’m taking it off. I’m not aiming for the best year I’ve ever had, I don’t care about my diets and workout plans. This year I’m going to focus on the things I enjoy and finding new things I’d never have considered. If I eat well it will be because I love the taste of the food, if I work out it will be because I truly want to exercise. I won’t be holding myself up against my own impossible standards then withholding my own love when I don’t measure up.
This year I’ll be focusing only on the things and the people that make me happy. I’ll be looking for the good in everyone and with any luck I’ll be able to stop trying to hide the good parts in me. I don’t think anyone can do the things they love when there’s so much they hate in the processing, so this year for the first but hopefully not the last time.
My only resolution is to love.
amandla
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