All thoughts vanish

I wish to set time free

“Good or bad, happy or sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky.”

— Pema Chodrön

Like every year, this one will also end.

Like everything manmade, the calendar of time is a construct — so in truth, the year itself as a measurement will pass by. And with it comes and goes so many words written about making resolutions, changing oneself, being made new.

There’s such a hopefulness in the dawn of a new year, I think. It’s an iconic image: the clean slate. On January 1, together the Western World wakes to a new dawn. Anything can happen. I can be reborn into myself — with a rededication to new habits, to a new me.

It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve started to embrace what is understood in the mainstream as “the power of positive thinking.” One modern prophet of affirmative thought is Stuart Smalley, the SNL character who brought “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough” to our cultural vocabulary.

Smalley’s Daily Affirmation was as funny as it was alien to us young Gen Xers who — by and large — had been raised by parents who toted us to the kinds of churches which poured ideas into our head like fill dirt.

The idea of positive thought about the self was, like, so awkward. By and large because conversation about the self didn’t exist.

All thoughts vanish into emptiness — yet they leave their residue.

I grew up without an awareness of self belief. Like many of us, when I looked in the mirror, most of the time I counted the things that needed to be changed.

It’s strange, isn’t it? How, especially when we are young, we get busy creating an idea of who we are by shaping the exterior? But all of that renovation and redecoration is the work of our interior lives.

I can see it clearly now as a parent: thoughts and feelings and ideas about what is “better” and what is “broken” — what should be exposed and what should be hidden.

There aren’t too many photos of us from the 70s — a few here and there.

I know there are memories of my younger thoughts captured inside my mind somewhere — but by and large I can’t remember much. I remember moments.

I remember teaching myself how to raise one eyebrow in the mirror.

I remember calling into the radio station and talking for hours to a local disc jockey after I got a cheap plastic phone extension in my room.

I remember climbing the maple tree in our front yard so I could be hidden and alone.

I remember roller skating on Lombard Street alone — the metal skates that attached to my tennis shoes. And I remember my first pair of real leather roller skates. Though I don’t remember how or when they arrived.

I remember experiences, but the thoughts that went through my mind at the time I can’t recall. It’s a feeling of the moments. A feeling of contentment, of being lost in what I was doing, of loneliness.

But that is the past — which is a powerful drug.

It’s a container that holds me still and fixed in an idea of who I am.

I am interested in that girl who I have been.

And I am regularly drawn into the American cult of nostalgia.

But there’s nothing I can do for her. I can quite literally only Be. Here. Now.

To put all our energy into the present moment, with great hope for the future — that is the mark of a person who is wise in the way of living. … No matter how adverse your present circumstances may be, even if it seems you have been defeated, it’s important that you stand up with strong resolve to turn your situation around …

— Daisaku Ikeda

I want to undo time’s constraints

So I suppose in that way I understand — as we approach the new year — why people cling to the idea of resolutions and change. I, too, feel the pulse of empowerment in standing up “with strong resolve” to turn my situation around.

But I still feel the residual feelings. I have big time love for the girl who let herself down — believed she failed, time and again.

I want to undo time’s constraints.

Let the future flow back over me as I walk forward.

Let the past feel the warmth of timelessness.

Let today be a promise I keep on keeping for myself.

—

Other writers I love on Substack:

• The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad - Including her upcoming New Year’s journal challenge

• Men Yell at Me - by Lyz (fellow Iowan, natch) - With the beloved Dingus of the Week

• Death Bore Beauty - Vanessa’s beautiful writing.