#sparkchamber 010223 — 2023 begins

Another spin around the sun, fifty-two #sparkchamber Mondays filled with stories of initiative, momentum, searching, providence, radiant creativity. How time flies! Looking back on past year-end/new-year essays we’ve posted here brings a sense of nostalgia; always that hopefulness, optimism, the promise of something better. Or at least something different.

Coming into 2020 we shined a light on the concept that every day offers a clean slate, that there is no special magic about the first day of a new year. Still true! Building on that, coming into 2021 we focused on how the subjective perspective of any experience becomes the defining memory of it. Half empty or half full is all in the way you tell it, the narrative you use to codify it, to remember it. We each have the ability to create the moment. So empowering … and still true!

Now, after what seems like truly unprecedented, fast-moving, and never-ending drama and chaos happening everywhere and all the time the past couple of years, with the dew still fresh on 2023, we offer this from American writer, journalist, and naturalist Hal Borland: “Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning, but a going on.” Yes! Just another day, another moment, another chance to be where you are and decide what to do next. Which includes the choice of doing nothing. “Every hand’s a winner and every hand’s a loser,” sings Kenny Rogers in the Gambler, and the key is “knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep.”

Which is no easy task. When is the right time? What is the right thing? What to do, what to do? How to find the time — to make the time — to ask, to wonder, to listen? This writer believes strongly in the capacity of sleep to recalibrate — or even reset — the levers. That the inner voice whispers the way forward when the ego lets go of the reins. The insight of dreaming. American naturalist and essayist Henry David Thoreau said, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams,” and British writer and theologian C.S. Lewis reminds us, “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”

So here on this 2nd day of another new year, we offer two thoughts. From Sarah Ban Breathnach, the best-selling author of Simple Abundance and Something More: “Take a leap of faith and begin this wondrous new year by believing.” And from philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”

To everyone, as we start this next turn about the sun, quoting Beyoncé, “In our perfect ways. In the ways we are beautiful. In the ways we are human. We are here. Happy New Year. Let’s make it ours.”

1.] Where do ideas come from?

You’ll never get bored when you try something new. There’s really no limit to what you can do. — Dr. Seuss

2.] What is the itch you are scratching?

It’s never too late; never too late to start over, never too late to be happy. — Jane Fonda

3.] Early bird or night owl? Tortoise or hare?

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection. — Mark Twain

4.] How do you know when you are done?

The best is yet to come. — Frank Sinatra