Frankly Put: A New Perspective on New Years’ Shears
Two years ago, I wrote about the ritual of The New Year’s Shears. I wrote about how I do not think that we should carry people forward through the year to do a mass snipping at the end in the name of New Year, New Me.
This time around, as we are preparing ourselves for the New Year (which honestly would not feel so different as the rest of the year did) I am challenging my perspective. Walk with me through this and let me cook. I have carried this tradition with me for the better part of my life and safe to say it has evolved as I have grown. Which I appreciate because it has met my needs and when I look back I can say that it met me where I was.
I have people in my life who hold strongly to the part of my personality that is very good at cutting people off. It has been repeatedly said to me how my energy of indifference makes me come off like I really couldn’t care less and that is what makes it very easy for me to cut people off at a moment’s notice. Honestly, that’s the case a lot of the time. However, this is not something I take pride in because it has constructed a box I now sit in and I do not want to sit in it on some days.
It sucks. It sucks to cut some people off. Admittedly, I owe it more to my desire for peace being stronger than my need for the presence of particular people. I still get burned. I am not this unshaken personality, I am just someone who learned to take what I am handed and adapt quickly to it. Do I still believe that you should cut people off? Yes! Stand on ten toes and do not walk around carrying the weight of people into rooms where they no longer belong. Do not hold on to people who do not wish to be here with you. Let go and let God they say.
I am human so I have a soft spot for certain people. I love slow because I learn to through learning you. Be it a friend, a confidant or lover. All relationships go through this and the longer you are around me the stronger the bond that ties me to you. Few have slipped through and jumped into strong bonds without the long walk to get there. I am learning to not be so opposed to that possibility even if it does not follow this “unwritten script” in my head.
All this being said, what is different in the perspective of the New Year’s Shears? I think I would like to talk about the season of making and retaining. When we speak about cutting off, it is often referenced as failing relationships. You know? The toxic, the narcissistic, the selfish, the Stockholm syndrome-type situations. What about the falling out of the good? Life is not always fair. There is a specific flavour of sorrow that comes when you have to cut off that relationship that did everything right for the first time in your life.
Every year, it is about cutting off but this year I think I am in a position to shift my point of view to the ones that I made. I am willing to stand on business and say that this year I have watched friendships I have made blossom and bloom in ways I never expected. Maybe because I spent so long always looking for the negatives to cut off I never figured there was another side of this. I guess it is also because I have just this year learnt what it looks like when I take back the reigns on my relationships with people. It’s not an expected thing, it is not fate but my gratitude ruling my experiences
This year, I found the peace that I was looking for last year. Or should I say that it found me? In this peace, I think my soul for the first time felt authentically present in the interactions I had. Perhaps that is the biggest take. This year, that is what felt a little different. The flavour of peace I shared with the people I met was different and for the first time in a long time, I was sharing in the space to just be. Shame that the trigger for this no longer is here but these things happen and we must march on.
I want to say I met new people both in my new connections and old ones too. People I have known for a decade or more, I got to meet in this newer version of myself. It felt like newly sitting with them across the room from me. I remember this night in this year when the boys made plans to meet up on a random weekend and before we knew it, 6 am had met us still up talking and gaming like we had started when we met at 6 pm the previous day. In these sessions, I think I grow so much in understanding myself, my friends and the situations that are in life.
I look back to all the female friendships I have nurtured. I feel like my 13-year-old self with the way I am learning so much from them; in a space where we have both intentionally claimed this friendship. It is going on nights out and finding myself so invested in the friendships that my fun is contained within them rather than based on external stimulants. However, Nairobi men being Nairobi men look at me with sneers and sharp glares. It is an odd experience because it feels like they want to be here but their reasons for wanting to be here are not like mine which is exactly why they are not here.
I look back to my professional relationships and how these interactions grew me. This career can be very unforgiving and these economic times are so harsh it is honestly disheartening. I am grateful I have people in the industry with whom there is always something to be shared that makes the future feel less bleak. There are things that I gladly share with my networks because I think whether or not these people are directly in this line of work, there is always something to be said from a new perspective.
Though I still have to partake in this tradition and in relationships I wish I could carry forward with me, I am grateful more than anything for the connections I have made this year… to put it Frankly.
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Author’s Note:
Have a Merry Christmas!
