Let Us Make It Magical

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With New Year coming, new beginnings are in oder. Everyone is telling you that, right? You are asked to feel a kind of magical flutter in your tummy as soon or even before you can see the first firework in the sky. There is that all-over excitement as new chances come our way. Are you excited? Are you feeling it? 

​If you are like me and, for whatever reasons, are not in for the all-changing excitement that others expect to see in your eyes but looking forward to 2024 anywway, I have a recommendation for you. For, you see, there is undeniably that miraculous midnight chime with an enchanting melody on 31st December, announcing an end and a new beginning. This charming sound is only to be heard at the turning of the year. So, maybe you can try to approach New Year with some different thoughts than you did all the years before? 

Let us try this. Imagine your life as a beautiful house. Because your life is a very beautiful house. On the first day of January, walk through your life and that house, slowly and with an open heart, room by room. Take your time, pause when you must, let out a litttle sigh when you feel like it.

As you enter the different rooms, look carefully around you. Examine closely. Open your eyes as you walk, try to see the little details, and try to catch the atmosphere and your emotions. Be honest in your very private, your very own evaluation. 

Inevitable, checking room by room in the morning of New Year's Day, you will have the feeling a lot of work is not done yet. You will see that many tasks are still waiting for you to be taken care of. Instantly, you notice the well- known cracks that still need to be repaired, and you are not sure if you ever can. You see wasted space in the rooms perhaps, unused resources that call for improvement.  Situations not talked about but want desperately to be solved might also reappear in your mind’s eye. 

Mistakes you have made in the past months will probably lie on one of the tables in the rooms like an open book. Mistakes that will make you sad for you know the year is gone forever and you cannot go back. You cannot relive those moments of missed chances to react differently; you cannot correct wrong decisions you made. However heartbroken and sorry you feel about them. Writing this, especially, especially this paragraph, actually  brings tears into my eyes.  I have a lot to improve and set right in the upcoming year. 
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Harm and unfairness or even pain inflicted by others upon you will also appear in one of the rooms, please be strong for that. Unfortunate events that caused you sorrow and made you lonely will be seen again. Nothing in that house remains hidden in the dark on that first day of January. But, with bravely doing your tour through the rooms, you already gave yourself permission to finally arrive at where you feel at least well enough to carry on for some time. 

And, most important of all, you should never forget what the last room in the house is representing. Anything you can see there is made of incredible courage. Your courage, to be precise. This room shows you the things you have achieved. Many magnificent accomplishments from the past year, I am certain, are build up in front of you in the most remarkable room of your life. The extraordinary talents you have used, for example. Or, recall for a moment the conversations you had about subjects you are very passionate about. Or, another example, the wonderful things you did for others, things you maybe weren’t aware of how excellent and special they were and how they made the days brighter for the people you did them for. Can you see it? Can you remember? Does this make you smile? 

As you are about to complete your round through the house, wondering kicks in. What to do with what you have seen today? How to cope with all the deep feelings inside you? How to manage the tasks ahead? How to find answers to all the questions you are having right now? 

Maybe this year, to balance the immense emotions we experienced by taking a tour through our lives, we should focus on the potential we have seen? Change what we can change, and if we can give to it all we have?

Wherever we go in the last days of December, we hear slogans like make a new beginning, be a new you, this is your brand-new start! This would mean sweeping all the rooms in the house, cleaning it all out until nothing of the old mess is left. Can we do that? Or, better, do we want that? No, I think we don’t. If we are looking for a new year where we won’t have any challenges or confrontations, we are simply asking for too much.

So, instead, we should try to embrace the constellations of indelible things and treasures we have and place them in the house together with new knowledge that made us wiser and more armed for the wonderful things yet to come. Try to keep what you are enthusiastic about, what is dear and precious to you. Be brave and go for love too. Love is everything, every second in your life. 

Try to listen to the magical midnight chime I mentioned earlier. Enjoy the special moment of the boundary between years, when the past and the future become your present. It is beauriful, that present, filled with light and power. Just like you. 
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Happy New Year. All my best wishes and my heart go out to you. 
Ute 

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