Frankly Put: The New Years’ Shears
And so another year has come and gone, with it the memories and aspirations of 12 months. In comes a chance to write down new resolutions, of course, some resolutions are recycled, with hopes of actually achieving them in the new year — hopes being the key word.
Which isn’t always the case, I mean maybe the recycling could also just be trying to maintain the routine of having the goals, without actually having to achieve them, like that coat at the back of your closet you save for some specific day that may or may not come. Even if you don’t wear anything other than the hoodie you wear on repeat, the hope makes you not put it in the pile to give away. Or, perhaps coupled with fear of one day needing that very fashionable piece of clothing and not having at that time, we hold on to that nearly outgrown coat, but I digress.
There is, however, this resolution that I find recycled without fearing needing it one day, without the hopes of needing it one day and not finding it. As we gear into the last few weeks of December, people often gather their things and prepare the “big scissors". With the countdown and fireworks, friendships apparently drop like flies. It has seemingly become a New Year’s tradition of the generation.
As I have gathered years in age, I guess my view’s slightly shifted though. Ten years ago, the whole ceremonious cutting off and leaving behind of people with the year left behind has always seemed kind of dumb. I mean, why not just cut them off as soon as you can? Especially if they did you wrong at the literal beginning of the year and this is doing you wrong in a manner that warrants the snip snip of the friendship tie. It was just a little baffling, now... It is still a bit of a pain in the neck to me, still a little dumb but I understand the logic a bit more.
I have watched a multitude of people in Oscar-worthy performances, move through the year, holding on to friendships they had long thrown from their lives. Doesn’t it kill you, even just a little, to keep being fake? The reality of things is that a lot of the times the other party continues to move like they got a friend in you since you entertain their behaviour. I don’t know, I just seems like a lot of wasted energy to me, but I can see the euphoria in leaving the weight of the year with the year that has come to an end.
Don’t get me wrong though, cutting off people while ending the year can be helpful, or we could even go as far as to say, therapeutic. I believe that not everyone that comes into our lives is destined to remain in our lives, that’s just fact. Friendships expire. People change, and sometimes it sucks, coming to terms with the idea that your branches grew in different directions from some people. Honestly, it is something I still have trouble with but that’s life, and life is kind of heartless like that, especially when there was no bad energy or animosity with them.
Every year, I watch people fall out. Every year, the pair of scissors seems to grow sharper and stronger. I think perhaps the older we get, the harsher the world gets and it leaves us with tighter circles. The good ones for us are fewer than we thought when we were casting out ties openly as young children with anyone and everyone, now we hold on to our one or two humans. If every year we are dusting off the scissors and cutting off our ties, I think it is inevitable that the sting will get shorter and shorter until we only have so much to tie around our people. Maybe it is life, or maybe it is out of circumstance, what can we do though?
To think and look back at our year and realize that things are not the same as they were before is to be human. To look back at a friendship and realize that you are not in a position to benefit one another is to be human. To look back and see growth is human. Slowly but surely, I am coming to see the weight of value I put on the people I have in my life. Learning that boundaries are healthy and if they are taken lightly, they can be broken just as much. It is not your job to change another human to suit what you have going in your life but it is your job to filter the people you let walk in and out of your life. However, maybe these are the chains we need to break off our feet, so we can dance in the fullness of life.
I have been of the belief that the people we keep around us are pretty paramount to the people we become, to the goals that we achieve, to the growth that we experience unconsciously or consciously. Perhaps, we find ourselves trying to drag the people who we think are good for us into the next year, doing things to try and hold on to that friendship like our lives depend on it, but maybe we aren’t holding on to the person. We are holding on to that potential we see in them. The beauty in expectations is blinding. It is easy to fall in love with the image we create of people in our minds but not the person on the ground.
With each new year, are we learning to unlearn this? Are we intentionally learning to look at people the way they are, warts and all? Are we breaking the mirror just a little bit to make room for the benefit of doubt? This blind spot we have to our own failings bruise our friendships more than our friends may want to admit. Yes your resolution is to get better the next year, but a rose can only grow so much surrounded by weeds. This is not to say that the weeds are the “bad” or “toxic” people in life; though they could be, but the ones who thrive in the soils, in the conditions we are in to our detriment. They are just trying to live as much as we are and are probably living more than we are in those conditions. Maybe, we are the weeds in the situations.
The garden of the world is ever-changing. Growing and dying with the seasons’ change. Maybe not all of us enjoy gardening every so often and prefer to do it all in one go once a year, but if you wish to maintain the neatness of the beginning of the year throughout, get that New Year’s shears out a bit more often. All the same, wishing that the pruning done on the 31st brought life and order back into your garden.
If you are ever to be quarantined again, the least you can do is enjoy the very garden around you, to put it Frankly.
