Casting on a New Year
Look Back? No, Cast On!
It’s December now, and that inevitably means a litany of “lookback” posts are hitting my Facebook and Twitter feeds: “Man of the Year,” “Top 10 Songs of 2015,” as well as the articles that talk about the current events that defined the year. Looking back is important; we need to learn from history, and remember the moments that shaped us and landed us at this particular moment in our lives. I’m still debating if I want to write a “lookback” post that goes into more depth than what I already put in my Thanksgiving Day post, but today, I don’t want to reflect on 2015. Today, I have 2016 on my mind.
I’ve seen the door close on several years where all I could say was, “Thank goodness that year is over.” I know I’m not alone; the New Year is unwritten, unscripted: we can cast all our aspirations upon it, leaving behind the frustrations and the successes of the prior year. It’s a fresh start, or an opportunity to build on where we already are. We get to imagine what our lives will be like twelve months into the future, and plan steps to get there.
As I was thinking about 2016 and the hopes I have for the New Year, it struck me that this moment is like starting a new project. First, comes the inspiration: we find the perfect pattern, the perfect yarn, or something that inspires us to action. From there, we go into planning mode, seeking out the right materials, the best way to showcase our inspiration, and hunting for any tips or tricks that help us get to where we want to go. We wind our yarn balls, pull out the perfect set of needles, set our patterns before us and cast on. All the planning is done; there is nothing left for us to do but execute.
As we cast our stitches on our needles, we don’t know what the journey will hold for us. Will we make a mistake in the pattern, and have to TINK back a few stitches? Will we make a gross error, and frog out inches and inches of our project? Or, that worst of all scenarios, rip all the way back to the start and just start over. Will it go perfectly, where the blocked project and the picture in front of us match exactly as we’d hoped? Or will it have a few errors, carefully hidden through tricks learned? Will life intervene, and cause us to set the project aside for a bit? Will the conversations we have with our peers over the needles cause us to have a life-altering revelation?
For me, this is how 2016 looks: I’ve planned, I’ve prepared, and I’m excited. All I need to do now is execute. But I’ve done enough rotations around the sun to know that all my planning and preparations will hit challenges. The year will not unfold the way I might hope or expect, and that is a good thing. It means that there is a point to traveling the path, to living the moments. I will make mistakes. I will make some awesome decisions that will yield outsized results. I will learn and I will grow. In the end, I think that’s all I can really expect of 2016: to be a different, and hopefully better, person by the end of it.