New Year

I've stopped being surprised at the regularity with which this blog falls by the wayside, but to be fair, it seemed like less of a priority this semester. Of course, that's another concern in itself, the ease with which I seem to dispense with my higher order functions and simply batten down the hatches. Such behavior should be reserved for only the direst necessities, or life just becomes a string of days spent coping with an exaggerated threat, constantly deferring the things that really make life great. I will try to remember this.

However, there's also another, more tangible reason for this blog's recent barrenness. I started this blog intending for it to serve the purpose that my written reflections once served - to provide a place to write out my thoughts without judgment in order to review them and possibly gain insight into my own psyche. It had helped in the past, allowed me to look at my thoughts calmly and gain a little perspective beyond the momentary intensity that always accompanied them when they were rattling around in my head. However I've recently decided that I cannot be fully open with myself if I'm also writing for the public, and so I've started writing out my thoughts for myself alone, with pen and paper as a sort of meditation. I decided that I want to hold something solid in my hands, a tangible product of my imagination and psyche that I can look back through and consider.

I'll still try to keep this blog updated obviously, and I still intend to link to the interesting things I come across, and if I write anything worth sharing, or that can be shared, I'm sure I will.

So, the new year.

I spent this new year's eve in much the same way I've spend the previous several by going to the Green Gulch Zen Center. Regardless of my feelings about Buddhism, either in itself or how it is practiced at this particular place (just like anything else, at times it seems like just another show, an act for its own end), I enjoy the sincerity of the new year's celebration they hold, which (at least for me) consists simply of walking into a wooded valley in the middle of the night guided down a path of lanterns, assisting a monk in ringing a large bell, and standing around a bonfire with cider. It seems to me to be the perfect end and beginning of a year, to return to the primordial darkness and the human community united in silence around a fire (at least it's usually silent, this year not so much...but the significance I associate with the event was undiminished), with only a bell to mark the passing from one year to another. Despite the simplicity of the event, it always has a profound effect on me for reasons I haven't been able to fully apprehend, I think partly because I always seem to return to the temple in entirely different states of mind from year to year. Each year, I interpret these simple rituals differently, look back with different eyes on not only the past year but the entire story of my life as I've lived it so far. Each year I'm a new person, but I walk into that valley each time carrying the weight of the past year in order to put it to rest there and walk out unburdened to begin another year-long journey.

Many things are changing. It's hard to recall a time in my past when things seemed so unclear, both regarding my external circumstances as well as my inner character, and so it seemed more important than ever to leave my burdens in the valley and truly let go of the debilitating desire for control. Choices will have to be made, but the strength to make them will come from the knowledge that I've already come a long way, seen and done many things, and that life will go on, and there is much more to see yet. Life isn't neat, and sometimes it's painful, but its beauty lies in the rough edges and the parts that don't fit. I will embrace this fact, leave my heart open to the truth of things and not hide behind my own urge to make sense of it all.

I know this: I have felt many things, and they have left their mark on me. This has been a year of tremendous emotional upheaval, and I am not unscarred, but I have also grown enough to know that it has been worth it, and that's a big step. The next step is a big one too:

I will need to have a little faith.