Monthly Musing – December 2024 – Finishing …

It’s hours away from the New Year and soon we’ll be in 2025.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been seeing lots of social media posts about “finishing” the year in a particular way for weeks … “finishing strong” seems to have featured particularly highly this year, making me think that the year has been some kind of race that needs a last burst of energy before breaking through the tape at the finish line at midnight.

There has been no “finishing strong” here.  I don’t have a new, shiny list of goals to “smash” or “slay” next year.  I’m not imagining myself on a podium as the first through the tape.  I don’t even see New Year as the last/first big party of the year that cannot be missed these days, although I did at one time.

These days, I’m more about “finishing gently”.  What if, instead of lists and goals and smashing things, I could let myself rest?  What if I could allow myself to sit with my book for just a bit longer, allow myself another brew and read a few more pages, or knit a few more rounds so that when New Year and the winter is over and the natural cycle of spring starts, I’m ready to go?  No smashing or slaying, but strong new shoots and leaves reaching up to the sunshine.  I like that analogy much more.

I was listening to a short meditation this morning about the year end, and it asked you to think about what you might like to leave behind in this old year instead of always thinking forward and potentially carrying everything from this year with you as you start your new plans.

In my mind’s eye, I could see it as leaving old emotions, habits and beliefs at a door, hanging them up like you would do a coat, a hat or a scarf.  It surprised me that the biggest “coat” for me is fear.  This has been a year of big change for us and change often comes hand in hand with fear: fear of the unknown, fear of the future, fear for those 18 year olds at university who think they’re immortal (even though I was once an immortal 18 year old myself), and fear of the change itself.

I’m lucky in that I’ve been able to deal with much of it this year by writing about it on the blog or saying it out loud and being reassured by the experiences of others – and the biggest piece of evidence that change is not a bad thing should be the fact that I am still here at my big age and writing this!  Whilst fear keeps us safe, for the most part it should really be a light summer jacket, perhaps even just a hat or a scarf, and not the heaviest of overcoats.  Looking at mine in my mind’s eye, it was a thickly woven dark-coloured woollen one and never mind hanging it up, I have imagined myself shrugging out of it and dropping it on the floor to step over.

This New Year, I like to think that I am “finishing weightless”.  I know I’ll pick up more layers as I go along next year, but there’s no need to carry enough through the door at midnight to weigh me down before I’ve even started.  I like the idea that whatever I plan to do next year, I won’t have the fear of expectation holding me back, and back in my mind, I see myself soaring over the dropped “clothes” of 2024 and stepping lightly through into 2025.

Are you coming?