Worth Keeping

   There's only one resolution ever worth keeping, New Year's or otherwise.  It's the resolution to be authentic to yourself.  Temet nosce, in the non-traditional Latin of The Matrix.  "Know thyself".

    Get to know who you really are.  Decide who you want to be and go be it.  Embrace the persons, places, and things that will lead you there; and rid yourself of the persons, places, and things that no longer serve you.  A simple formula, even if only the tinest minority of the population actually goes through with it. 

   Every year that passes by represents, in the personal history of somebody somewhere, a time for taking out the trash and cleaning house.  The places and things are easy enough, but when it comes to the persons, this is where most of these individuals in transition get hung up on the whole process.  After all, nobody sets out to be an asshole, even when the people in question are really holding you back, intentionally or not. 

  This is where the inauthenticity kicks in.  You get used to appeasing those who would put up a fight when you take risks, people who quietly judge and dismiss you, who are only tied to you through some shared history and with whom you create nothing new or valuable.  Maybe you're conflict averse, afraid to get into a dust-up with those closest to you, for fear of losing them, even though you're legitimately pissed with decisions they've made. Because certain individuals haven't acted in a way that demonstrates friendship and loyalty to you. Maybe you've just made appeasement a habit.

  In any relationship, even those with places and things, there's a point where you just get sick of self-censorship for the sake of being sociable and appearing upbeat, a good employee or happy-go-lucky buddy, where you're tired of playing Chamberlain to the unintentional aggressors around you in the false hope of a just peace. When you're just going to do what you want.  Fuck the world. 

  Yes, in case you haven't already figured it out, I'm starting the last day of 2010 in something of a foul mood.  But as always, this is mostly just me taking out the trash in the best way I know how: the written word.  And I may as well vent it out before I party down tonight.

   One of my mentors once pointed out the importance of noticing the symbolism of your outer life.  Handing in the Form N9 the other day to my landlord, I took a moment to appreciate the number of my apartment building on my street: 360.  A full turnaround, where you end by returning to the beginning.  I prefer to think of life's cycles as an upward spiral: you eventually come back to where you started, but at least one level higher up in three dimensional space.  Life cycles involve continuous growth, though at each stage of that cycle, you shed the dead cells and let them fall away. 

    Michael pointed out to me the other day that in at least several entries now, I've said some variation of the phrase "I could give a damn what people think".  Of course, that sends the exact opposite message, especially when you repeat it across several entries.  And the truth is, up until this point, for much of 2010, I have given my power away to others.  I have cared what other people think of me, too much so.  Of everything I've learned about myself in 2010, I believe this is the quintessential root cause of my own self-created obstacles.  I'm grateful to Michael for pointing this out, obviously.

  But you know, of the plethora of concepts I've been meditating on over this holiday break, it's that true family, blood relations or not, will give their input and advice, warn you about potential injury, and otherwise be completely free to disagree with you while not sacrificing your relationships in the process.

  They'll see you experience major traumas like betrayal and shock and not lose respect for you if your reaction to all of it doesn't meet their expectation of what's "appropriate". They'll come around and support decisions that you've made even if they advised against them during your deliberations.  They'll walk their talk about loyalty and friendship and rectitude and not equivocate to suit their thinly concealed personal agendas.  They'll have your back, even if they don't understand you.  And they'll push you to better yourself, in a way that demonstrates high compassion.

  But if you don't test your relationships when you have to, when the occasion calls for you to be authentic to yourself even when it's inconvenient, awkward, or downright offensive to your greater family, you're betraying yourself.  And that's the highest and most damaging betrayal that exists. 

 That betrayal then affects everything you do, from the career paths you take to the friendships you keep to the romantic relationships you find yourself in.  Then you get stuck in vicious cycles of your own creation that hold you back, making the same mistakes and repeating the same patterns over and over again, until years pass by and your hair goes gray and you wonder why, for all of your smarts and ambition, you were never able to figure it out. You become, as the movie line goes, "an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone." 

  In 2011, resolve to be loyal to yourself.  To get into a dust-up when a dust-up is called for, if it means that you express yourself authentically.  To give yourself permission to be intense or angry or sad or afraid if that's how you feel at the moment. To stop apologizing in advance to those who care about you for actions and decisions you know are right for you.  To surround yourself with persons, places, and things that are aligned with your own vibrations and allow, with gratitude, everything that isn't going your way to bow out of your experience and fall away naturally.

  In 2011, resolve to put into action all of the things you've thought about doing for so long, to break out of the patterns that society expects of your and actually build an infrastructure for the ambitions everyone else says are impossible.  To give legs to your fondest dreams, that you may end next year in a place far beyond the mundane expectations of what we think life actually is.

  In 2011, resolve to be authentic, inside and out.  It's the only resolution worth keeping, and probably the hardest to keep.

  Personally, I resolve to begin fulfilling these resolutions one day early.

  And how about that?.....I feel better already.