Judith Klemos

Happy New Year’s Eve 2022!!

I’m not sure exactly what I want to write, but sitting down at the laptop felt like where I wanted to be at this moment.

For many many years I made it a point to journal on New Year’s Eve. My daughter was little and my husband worked midnights, so I spent almost every New Year by myself. It was a time of reflection for me. Looking back on the year and looking forward to the new.

Tonight I felt like maybe blogging is this New Year’s journal.

The Gift

As I look back over the year I have to say the gift of this year has been ‘expansion’.

I took a chance this year, after some deep reflection, to purposely go outside my comfort zone. I had realized that my world shrunk. In some misguided effort to improve my life I made it smaller (for a brief period). I’m not even sure how or why, but I did. I started living inside my comfort zone, instead of outside of it.

Now granted, my comfort zone is a whole lot different than most people’s. The things that are in my comfort zone are waaaay outside normal people’s. (But who’s normal anyway?) I am comfortable in the deep end of the pool. The shallow end, not so much; so you can imagine how maybe my world could’ve shrunk without my even noticing.

But even in the midst of that shrinking, I expanded. I invited in new friends and clients. I embraced pieces of myself that I had put away for another day and then forgot. I sought new treatments for my aging body. I said yes to seeing a Shaman when I found one who resonated at the deepest level with me. I said yes to a functional medicine doctor.

I opened up to new creative hobbies that allow my self-expression in new ways. Upcycling furniture to have items surrounding me that truly reflect my own unique style has brought new joy to me everyday life.

I said yes to me when I said no more to someone I once called a best friend. Until I did that I didn’t realize what a burden that friendship had become and how small it made me feel, because I had entered into yet another narcissistic abusive relationship.

Expansion

The Lesson

I would say the lesson this year was impermanence.

I realized that life is about impermanence. The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the young, the old, the wretched, the wrecked and the wrong. None of it lasts.

It’s all about impermanence.

Nothing stays the same. Nothing goes as planned – at least not entirely the way it is planned anyway. Nothing good, nor bad, is permanent. Nothing.

Have you heard the saying, ‘the only thing constant is change’? Nothing in life is permanent. Not a bad haircut. Not a broken heart. Not a promotion. No relationship. Not a thing. (Relationships evolve (aka change) or they die, so even though they may last 20, 30, 40, or more years they too are impermanent because they are not the same relationships year to year.)

Time is a moving train and while you can close the shades to the moving landscape it doesn’t stop the train from moving. You will end up somewhere different than where you started. Each year is like that. One train car, with 365 different landscapes out the windwo.

We like to think we build a life acquiring things we desire and getting rid of things we don’t. We get upset when the desired things we acquired don’t last as long as we’d like. Impermanence brings suffering then.

We get ourselves all twisted up when something unfortunate happens because we imagine that this is how it will be/feel forever. But it won’t last. Nothing ever does. Even when we are deep down in the tarpits kind of darkness, it doesn’t last.

If you can just hold on, a shift will come.

Impermanence

The Blessing

Looking back, the blessing of this year has been ‘perspective’.

Realizing how powerful this one word is. No matter the situation I can always shift my weight and find a new perspective on it.

What is, may only be. It also may not be. My perspective is my reality, and if I don’t like my reality I am free to shift it. To change my perspective. To gain perspective. And if I lose perspective it is easy enough to retrieve it.

Life isn’t about getting it right. That was my perspective shift this year. It was a big one too. Like feel the Earth move under my feet kinda shift.

Life. Isn’t. About. Getting. It. Right.

There are far too many possibilities existing all at once for there to be just one ‘right’ choice, path, career, move, answer, etc.

I used to think that life was like a game of chess. I thought it was about strategizing and seeing the whole board to make the right moves. But it isn’t.

Life is more like tennis meets Let’s Make A Deal. There are two super powers you must have. You must center yourself to focus your energy into lobbing the ball over the net and onto the other side of the court. Just make it inside the lines, that’s the first super power. Centering. Staying in that very moment, aiming and following through.

What Life returns to you has nothing at all to do with what you initially served over the net. It seems like it does, but it doesn’t. It seems like it should, but it doesn’t. It’s random and unknowable.

Like picking a door on Let’s Make A Deal. It doesn’t matter what you did that landed you in front of those doors. How you make your choice does not affect what is behind them. You could try to use your spidey senses to choose the best result and end up with a lifetime supply of bananas. Or you could just blurt out a number without any thought at all and win a trip, a boat, a car and a lifetime supply of groceries.

What matters, no matter what’s behind the door, is how you respond to it. It matters how you serve and how you return the serve. It doesn’t matter where the ball lands. Not even if it goes out of bounds.

I guess it really is like the old saying goes, “it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. It matters how you play the game.” Somewhere along the way visions of bumper stickers with “he who dies with the most toys wins” clouded my judgement. It caused me to take my eye off the ball. I started focusing on the (perceived) lack in my life. What I didn’t have. Goals I hadn’t made yet. Paths not taken.

But for every path not taken, there were paths that took me places I couldn’t imagine. For every unmet goal, there were achievements I couldn’t have planned for. For every thing I haven’t acquired, I received love, compassion, encouragement, acceptance, opportunity, abundance, friendship, truth, connection and hope.

That’s not bad for 365 days.

May your New Year be filled with gifts, lessons and blessings.

Jade