Each new year comes with that “new car” smell - unblemished, fresh, full of anticipation for promising new adventures. “This year will be different,” we tell ourselves. “This year will be better — I can almost taste it.”
Yes, clearing out the old is a great way to make way for the new. I get it. But, indulge me for a minute while I challenge this old adage and invite you to entertain the idea of welcoming the “old” you this year.
You might be familiar with C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, specifically The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, stories that invite us into the enchanting world of Narnia where four children are challenged to free the world from the evil White Witch and save themselves. When Lucy goes inside the magical wardrobe while playing and discovers Narnia, she exclaims, “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now… Come further up; come further in!”
I remember that my mom kept an old “summer camp” chest in a cupboard upstairs just outside her bedroom door. Like Lucy climbing into the wardrobe to return to Narnia time and again, I would sneak upstairs when everyone was occupied watching football, cooking dinner, or getting lost in a book, pull out the chest and rummage around through the scrapbooks, old letters and newspaper clippings, trophies and science fair ribbons to see what new stories I could uncover. Unknown family marriages, hidden talents (who knew my dad was a bowler or that my mom was in a band?), and love stories...
I once found an old pressed rose with the florist card tucked inside an envelope - a love letter my grandfather sent to my grandmother. “If a rose was meant to say I love you,” he wrote, “may this one last forever.” It was dated 1954, the year before my grandmother passed away. I never got to meet her.
These stories, these hidden gems, were tokens and treasures of the adventures and tragedies of my family of origin. They are my story.
I certainly understand the impulse and desire to “clear the decks” at the start of each new year. Sometimes we stumble into patterns and relationships, habits that no longer serve us and then we find ourselves scratching our heads wondering, “how did I even get here?”
Parker Palmer, in his book A Hidden Wholeness, inspires us to rethink the “success path” we have been culturally encouraged to follow. He cautions us, “As we become more obsessed with success, or at least surviving…we lose touch with ourselves and disappear into our roles.”
It’s true, while juggling and negotiating the demands of life, we can sometimes feel lost in the many hats we have to wear. The idea of “fresh start” becomes cloaked in images of things we feel we must create or accumulate outside of ourselves. Swept up in our quest for the new tool, new plan, new membership, new relationship— all to fix, solve or affirm us - we often forget that what we are looking for is already inside of us.
Your story lives inside of you. It’s true that not all stories that we uncover when we go poking around feel like blessings or treasures. However, if you just go “further up and further in” to recover what has become buried and dusty, discarded or almost entirely forgotten, you just might be able to reconnect with your earliest memories , memories of adventure and romance, of courage and resilience, of resourcefulness and play. You just might return to the “old you,” the “home place” where your true, unadulterated self lives.
Let’s dive in and let the magic of 2023 unfold!