Has your resolve to keep your New Year Resolutions dissolved?
Missed out on re-energizing your will power at the Lunar New Year?
No worries. In the next few weeks we have several opportunities to recharge and revamp resolutions that have gone the way of dissolution. These opportunities might even stand a better chance of success from the get go than a Lunar New Year reboot would have.
I find that self-betterment projects work best for me during Spring. Maybe it comes from loving the anticipation of my late Spring birthday as a child. The fresh growth, the energy of birth and blooms, birds and bunnies nesting, it all just makes me believe in possibilities, fresh starts, and goodness.
I am not Catholic and do not come from a Catholic tradition. But I have always viewed Lent as an opportunity to do some some Spring house cleaning on myself. So I give up something for the relatively short time period of the Lenten Season. If what I give up is not a really bad vice, then I can then reintroduce the item given up in moderation, if desired.
In Christianity the 40 days of Lent, which do not include Sundays for some reason, starts with Ash Wednesday and continues over the next six weeks through Easter Eve, except that for Catholics Lent ends with Sundown on Holy Thursday prior to the Lords Supper Mass.
No matter how you interpret the religious observances of Spring there are several dates coming up in the next few weeks that can give you some ritual “oomph” in recharging your resolutions.
Spring Dates Appropriate for Ritual Renewal
- LENT: begins Wednesday, March 5th and ends on Thursday, April 17
- INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY: March 8
- EASTER: Sunday April 20th
- EQUINOX: March 20th (16:57 GMT)
- NEW YEAR (Persian and Baha’i): March 21st
- EARTH DAY: April 22nd
Traditions such as Spring Cleaning are found the world around. After being closed in for the winter months the idea of throwing open the doors and windows and airing living quarters out, emptying rooms and cleaning our homes top to bottom still makes sense. The agrarian motivation of having the time before planting when intense field work begins, be for annual household tasks and maintenance made very good sense. We are no longer a primarily agricultural people, but what was once logic has become luck. In some cultures is is very important that your home be completely cleaned before the New Year for luck to visit the house in the coming year.
Not being a terribly superstitious person, I cannot motivate myself with stories of bad luck. So I try on different rituals to see if they fit with my lifestyle and needs. If the match is a good one, then I can call up tradition in the future to repeat a past success. Can you tell I am steeped in anthropology?
This year I did not make any resolutions. I did purchase a plaque that emphasizes partnership in a feng shui sort of way for the part of the house where my husband and I spend most our waking time together. I also chose a word for the year: infrastructure.
So what I will be reaffirming, resolving, and rebooting will be my attempt to impose order built on a sound structure into my life. I have made headway on several house projects, but come a week from tomorrow, I’m giving up soda for Lent and I am imposing order on my office that has degenerated into a storage room over the last couple of years. By the beginning of Spring my house, both literal and metaphorical, will be in order.
I will be doing weekly before and after pictures of the office and storage area and maybe a few other areas each week starting next Monday and continuing through Easter.
Anyone care to join me?
Yikes Nancy,
It’s so bad I close my office door when we have company over, and I work in my recliner on my laptop. Easier on the back I say. Well, it is.
I do love Spring. I look forward to lush new leaves even more than I do flowers, that certain soft but bright shade even here in the desert that you see at no other time. Have I ever mentioned how much I miss green? I came here from Oregon, where the entire palette seemed made up of shades of green. I wasn’t willing to be cold and wet though, as the price to pay. A few years back I painted my living room wall green so that from my chair in the winter I have green and in the summer, the trees just continue the green out our windows.
I am terrible at cleaning up. But having some order in my office does sound appealing. Who knows? I have made that promise to myself so many times I hate to make it again. So, we’ll see is the best I can do.
Happy housecleaning, and thanks for the reminder of those dates.
Blessings,
Gerry
Gerry, my friend, sometimes I think we are cut of the same cloth. I miss green too – heavy, lush, wet greens. Northeastern Indiana, where I grew up, was originally a wooded, swampy land with a full range of greens all the way from the dark mossy green of decomposing tree trunks to the vibrant shout as bright green fronds unfurl. A tiny corner of the original landscape was my play yard. I am so lucky to have experienced this. Sounds like you were too.
I have to follow through with this. I need a place to where I may retreat so I can work without interruption when the Hubby is also working at home. Namaste, my friend.