There’s a lot of talk every January about starting the new year off right.
You need to get organized — file those receipts, buy plastic bins for the pantry, delete the extra photos on your phone.
You need to get in shape — try Pilates, yoga, high intensity interval training, weight lifting, walking, cycling, or all of them.
You need to eat healthy — choose an eating plan: Mediterranean, DASH, paleo, keto, vegetarian, vegan, write a grocery list and head to the store.
I’ve been thinking about what it feels like when the new year doesn’t start off right.
Maybe someone you love has lost someone they loved.
Maybe your health or the health of a family member is in jeopardy.
Maybe you or a friend are getting used to being divorced after decades of being married.
Maybe you’ve gotten bad news at work.
Maybe none of those things have happened, but you just don’t feel like your life is moving in the right direction.
How do those experiencing one or more of these difficulties reconcile their pain with the rah-rah “Make 2025 great!” attitude of so much of the rest of the world?
I speak from experience when I say it’s tough. Life ebbs and flows, with times full of joy and others full of sorrow. And these times don’t always line up with the calendar.
In fact, coming off the holidays can be a particularly difficult time for people. I saw one survey that reported 55 percent of Americans experienced sadness and loneliness during the holidays. In another poll, 42 percent of adults said their stress increases during the holidays.
I believe part of the problem is that modern life is so disconnected from natural cycles. Our behavior is no longer influenced by circadian rhythms and the patterns of the seasons. We’ve conquered the darkness and cold of winter with electricity and heat.
I’m reading a book right now called “Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times” by Katherine May, and I find it quite comforting.
“There are gaps in the mesh of the everyday world, and sometimes they open up and you fall through them into somewhere else,” she writes in the prologue. “Somewhere Else runs at a different pace to the here and now, where everyone else carries on.”
This falling through marks the start of winter, she writes, a season we try desperately to avoid. Instead she suggests we learn to invite winter in.
“Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season in which the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements sparkle,” she writes. “It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order.”
Getting organized would be great. But I’d rather start the year by learning to better appreciate winter.
— Pamela Lannom is editor of The Hinsdalean. Readers can email her at [email protected].
