The Electric Idealist

This is my favorite part of Christmas – after it’s over. I’m not the Grinch and that hasn’t always been true, but it’s been my general feeling for the last 15 years or so. Christmas Present was sort of disappointing and lonely, and the ghost of Christmas Past gets harder and harder to deal with. Kind of a sadistic s-o-b, isn’t he? I have enough trouble keeping all I feel in check these days. The upping of the ante Christmas brings is not welcome. I’m all in as it is.

So now we move on to the new year, and man, I am all about that. A fresh start, and my hope is that next year is going to be better than that just passed. If not, too bad and I’ll get through it, but at the beginning there is always that possibility, the potential that something will break loose and take me in another direction and it’ll be better than where I am currently, and that’s where I hang my hope. I’d even settle for just a better view of the road ahead, cuz I’m really not sure where I’m headed.

This week I’ve been reading alot and sleeping in and going for long walks and taking photos in the abnormally warm and sunny weather we’ve been having. I feel creative and open in a way I haven’t for a very long time. I feel like I’m back, though I couldn’t say exactly where I’ve been. Me, and yet not me, for several months now. Not depressed, not anything really – getting through the days as they came, hanging on hard to my ideas about who I am, who I want to be, and who I should be. Doing what was expected of me – meeting my responsibilities at work and at home, and taking care of my health.

I’ve come to think of this last year as rebuilding, or moving into a new house. You bring all the old meaningful stuff with you, leave all the crappy stuff in the dumpster, and set up in your new place. It’s different, but good, and your old stuff looks good in the new living room with the new stuff you bought cuz the house is bigger than the one you’ve been living in. It all goes together, and there’s room for all of it – all of you.

So this is me, maybe not back to an older version of me, but a new and improved version – incorporating the best parts of the old and adding some new. Willing to let go of the idea that I need to be a certain way at all; that I need to be what I used to be, which frankly was not that great, or who I think I’d like to be. I’m going to try to just be and see how that works out.

I’ve been envisioning myself hanging on to a branch above a raging river. Clutching it with all my strength, scared to let go and float away. My fingers are raw and bleeding, and my muscles ache with the effort. I have been so afraid to just let go and let the river carry me away, cuz I don’t know where I will end up and I’m not sure I won’t drown. I know how to swim, but the water is churning and seems dangerous. It probably is, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be okay.

So that’s what I’m telling myself now: Just keep swimming. Float when your arms and legs get tired. Trust the flow to take you where you need to go.

I have loved the Indigo Girls since I first heard them 30 years ago. Watershed is my favorite song:

© Emily Ann Saliers

It has meant alot to me, this song; from the first time I heard it I felt it had been written for me. And so now, again, here I am. Not so much learning to swim now, though, as trusting that I know how. It seems scary, but exhilarating, too.

So I guess you could say that my goal for the coming year is just to be. (How’s that for an oxymoron? Ha! My whole life the past few years is a study in contradiction.)  Let it be is my mantra, and it applies to myself as much as anything else. It has arisen out of my eat the Christmas cookies approach to life the past couple of weeks (still one week to go!). I didn’t realize how tightly I had been hanging on until I started to let go.

On we go, into the future, the unknown. No ghost to show us the way. That’s just a story. This is the real thing, and ultimately we have to find our own way through the past, the present and the future. Every choice is worth your while.