This morning I attended the New Year’s Day celebration at my local Won Buddhism temple. I actually watched the live stream on YouTube (link). But for me that counts as attending!
The person who welcomed us was a member of the temple and she shared her thoughts about the new year.
She said:
“2025 was honestly one of my most difficult years. I felt hopeless and impotent in response to causes and conditions that seemed overwhelming. As the end of the year approached, I began to wonder why we divide our experience into years.”
Hey! This sounds familiar!! 😊 I just did a blog post about this theme! “A Summary of Time” (link)
She continued:
“I realized that to call 2025 a terrible year, was to ignore the many fulfilling days and uplifting moments that it also contained.”
Yes! That’s what I was saying too. Except my post started out talking about days as the unit of time (“I had a bad day.”)
She went on:
“So my intention for the coming year is to treat each day as a mini New Year. This means setting intentions at the beginning of the day, sustaining hope through the day, and reflecting and redirecting myself if necessary at its close.”
She’s now taking the pressure and structure she was imposing on a year and imposing it on a day.
She went on:
“Time is a construct of our own devising. And I intend to fill each day with as much significance as I would a whole year. So I wish you, Happy 365 New Years days to everyone!”
I really hope that after a few days of this new structure she realizes that time really is an artificial construct that we as humans have imposed on our world. And as such, substituting day for year as the unit of measure simply perpetuates that construct. And adding that layer of pressure to DO each day and to transfer the concept of a year of intentions to each day sounds absolutely exhausting.
So I truly hope that she recognizes that it is unnecessary to apply any of those artificial time pressures at all. We can let go of and release all expectations. We change moment by moment. And while it is fine to plan and act with intention and purpose, imposing artificial containers of time upon our lives only serves to limit us.
It is okay to live moment by moment.
May each breath be a New Year. May each breath be a new beginning.
And may each breath be NOT a chance to set goals or aspirations or whatever people do at the beginning of each year.
May each breath instead be a chance to start again and continue or begin our practice again.
Every moment is a chance to change our thoughts. And every moment there is also a chance to forgive ourselves if we are not able to change our thoughts in that moment. Because with another moment comes another opportunity. And it is also perfectly fine to let every moment be the same. It is radical to allow ourselves to just be in the moment. No expectations, no hopes, no goals.
Just be. Here. Now.
You are here. You are now.
Happy New Breath to all! 💜🙏🌍
My song to accompany this post is “Starting Over” by Macklemore. Written by Ben Haggerty, Ryan Lewis, and Ben Bridwell.
It’s a really powerful song about starting over with his journey with drugs. So content warning. I find it incredibly inspiring. 💗
PS: This is my 40th post here! Thanks for reading!
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