By Ashley Lodato
On the brink of a new year we ask ourselves, “What lies ahead?” We look back on the past year’s milestones and accomplishments. We make resolutions both grandiose and modest. We attempt to move past difficult experiences; we try to let bygones be bygones. We gird ourselves with quiet resolve to live better — more simply, with more generosity, more empathy, more gratitude.
We struggle to perform the complex task of letting go, which the nature of human existence requires. Time marches on, and the seasons they go ’round and ’round. We are perpetually ushering out the old while we shepherd in the new.
There are some who speak of a burning ceremony — a ritual for transformation that allows us to surrender the things that burden our lives and our minds while making room for those things that uplift us. The piece of paper on which our old habits, negative emotions, and crippling thoughts are written is burned ceremonially, transforming the paper from one form to another and symbolizing the conversion of the burdensome elements into hopes, goals, and opportunities for growth. Out with the old, in with the new.
It’s a bit of a stretch to refer to the summer’s wildfires as a burning ceremony, but the experience imposed on many people a similar but involuntary exercise in letting go. “What matters?” we all asked ourselves at some point last summer, and “What can we give up?” Most of us were lucky enough to have this ranking remain a theoretical exercise, one whose consequences we never had to endure. But some who lost everything found greater clarity in their own priorities, as well as an admirably calm acceptance of life’s vagaries. The spaces left by the missing pieces of their old lives made room for new routines, new dreams.
After the burn, new green growth was visible on charred hillsides. Balsamroot, elderberry, lupine bloomed anew. Woodpeckers tapped freshly burned bark for insects. August crops of asparagus were harvested. While no one would have wished for such a fast and furious annihilation of the old, the emergence of that which was new gave us hope.
The trick for the new year will be for us to continue to explore the questions we asked ourselves when it really mattered. What will we release? What will we embrace? May the new year allow us all the opportunity to find our own answers.
