It is strange that we place such a huge emphasis on new beginnings in a season when the days are cold and short and whole fields of flowers have been struck dead by frost. We celebrate the start of something new, and then huddle together for months waiting for the first buds of spring. But there is still something about the stillness after a holiday that invites me to begin filling the silence with sparks of what could be, what should be. I allow myself to hope, to touch my own desire, which is of course always tinged with fear. I am reminded of past hopes that ended with disappointment. The older I get, the more New Years Eves I collect, the more past portraits of myself I shuffle through in my mind, with all the associated hopes and dreams of that person.
Someone once asked me if I ever talk to my past self, a suggestion I found silly at the time. “You know, do you ever encourage them, tell them they’re going to be ok, stuff like that?” It didn’t make sense to me why I would do that, but the idea grew on me gradually. As I became more intentional about some of the personal work I was doing, it became clear how harsh I was with my younger self. I held them to impossibly high standards, judged their failures, and shook my head in disgust when I thought about all their mistakes, not unlike many adults I had in my life as a child. So I tried it. I began to talk to my younger self, and soon learned that this role of gentle encourager suited me better than the harsh drill sergeant I had been.
Getting older is hard, since every year we have more of our past selves to deal with. But I am interested in finding out what might change if I learn to befriend these many selves. The poet Lucille Clifton addresses this relationship so beautifully in her poem “i am running into a new year”, coincidentally published in the year I was born. When she wrote it, she had already lived over 4 decades and buried both her parents. It is the poem of someone in midlife who has experienced life and loss, who is still figuring out how to be in relationship with herself. I get the sense she hadn’t quite figured it out yet. This is a comfort to me, and the poem feels like a companion to anyone still navigating the mystery of how to be at home in our own bodies. I like that it offers no answers and includes no period. Her presence in the poem is enough.
i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me
—Lucille Clifton (1936-2010)