Does anyone else feel that we somehow time-warped to the year 2018? Not only that, but where did the first week go? I’m not really a New Year-New Me, type-of-a-girl, but the English teacher in me loves some good symbolism, you know, new beginnings and fresh starts, goodbye to the old and hello to better.
At The Queen Vic Pub and Kitchen on New Year’s Eve, I said goodbye to 2017 with a beef pot pie. For the last eight months, I’ve refrained from meat and for the past six, dairy, too. I can’t say I crave either. The substitutions amaze me, and I love my vegetables. I started 2017 with an extra twenty pounds and a cholesterol problem. I ended it without. Victory. The plant-based diet has been good to me, and the beef pot pie was more of a ceremony than a necessity, sort-of-a I can do what I want, and you are quite lovely, butI think it’s best to leave you here in 2017. The pot pie represents some other heavy baggage I’ve carried. Goodbye baggage. You are heavy and unnecessary. Goodbye.
After my beef-pot-pie goodbye, Kody and I returned home to our La Quinta, (check out my post, That Time When I Met Harvey, if you wonder why I call the La Quinta home) and from the La Quinta we walked next door to Lucy Ethiopian Restaurant and Lounge, where we met our friend Erica, Queen Vic bartender/soon-to-be-full-time student. The Ethiopians welcomed us like family. We danced, we drank coffee, we smoked the watermelon hookah, and we looked to the future with an open mind.
This year I can’t say that I’ve made any resolutions, or maybe I should say nothing new. I find myself reflecting upon the past year as the best of times and the worst of times, while looking forward with hope and excitement. In the next couple of months, we will finally move back home, brand new from top to bottom, with my stamp on all of it. This past week, and for a while now, I find myself looking in the mirror each morning, pointing at myself, and saying, “The only person you have to be better than today is the person you were yesterday.” I find myself thinking about doing more of what works in my life and less of what doesn’t. Is that a resolution?
Yesterday I saw this movie, The Light Between Oceans. A lighthouse keeper named Tom (Michael Fassbender) and his wife Isabel (Alicia Vikander) live on the island of Janus off the coast of Australia. They recue a baby girl drifting at sea with her dead father and keep her as their own, later to face the consequences of their actions.1
Grab a box of tissues.
Tom tells Isabel that the island and the month of January are named after Janus, the ancient Roman god of beginnings, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings.
Janus depicted with two faces, looking to the future and the past.2
There seems no better time for renewal than the beginning of a year—except maybe for the beginning of each new day. So what if you set a goal for yourself and screwed up before the end of the first week of January? So what? Each day is a new day. I’ve always loved that saying: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Because none of us are perfect, and every day is another opportunity for a do-over. 2017 met me with significant challenges, but I’ve always believed everything happens for a reason. My mom used to say that, and at the beginning of 2018, I’m finally starting to understand the reason. The passage of time meets us all with challenges, and through each challenge we learn and grow in strength and wisdom.
Maybe I do have a resolution after all:
Faith + Gratitude = Peace + Hope
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_Between_Oceans_(film)
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus
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