Resolutions

New Year's Eve celebration headbands made by my daughters. 

 

by Cathy

New Year's Eve is an emotionally taxing holiday. The celebratory expectations revolved around how one will spend the very last minute of the current year, but most importantly, the first minute of the next year, seem to take on a desperate feel. One must get dressed up; have somewhere fun to go; have someone to share it with; someone to hug; someone to kiss; someone to have a glass of champagne with.They say, after all,  that with whom you kick in a new year is whom you will be with the rest of the year.


I spent this New Year's Eve with my husband and two daughters. We drove downtown to check out the windows at Macy's, the lights down Michigan Avenue, people-watched as dressed-up crowds laughed and rushed through the chilly yet unseasonably mild night and naturally, ended up at the Rock N' Roll McDonald's before we headed home to celebrate together. We danced in feather boas and glittery pink scarves, drank champagne, had some sweets, snapped pictures and even threw homemade confetti. In classic Greek and Latin style, my kids stayed up until 1:30am and showed no signs of settling down to bed until forced to do so.

As part of Greek tradition/superstition, I clean my house from top to bottom every New Year's Eve as a way of ridding the house of the old, dusty and dirty - and welcoming in a new, fresh, clean year. Additionally, upon entering your house for the first time in the new year, you must enter with the right foot, to ensure that the year starts on 'the right foot'.


Every January, hope springs eternal and gives us a new opportunity to erase our past mistakes and rid ourselves of toxic people or unpleasant situations. We do this by dedicating and disciplining ourselves and setting new, different, big, challenging, life-changing, aspiring, success-oriented goals for ourselves. I'd like to share with you some of mine:

- To truly put myself first in every sense of the word. This will be the overall theme and objective that all of my other resolutions will revolve around.

- To be more intuitive to what my mind, body and soul are telling me.

- To be more intuitive in terms of my relationship with my family.

- To meditate and make yoga a bigger part of daily routine.

- To set higher personal and professional goals for myself and see them through.

- To be dedicated to these goals and aspirations. In the famous words of Oprah, if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that no one will give you anything in life. If there is something you want for yourself, you have to get out there and do it for yourself. NO ONE else will do it for you.



As I can personally attest, none of these superstitious rituals or traditions guarantees anything. Doing them doesn't guarantee that the year will go 'right', or that you will end up spending the year with the people who were there with you at midnight.  Because no matter how badly we want these rituals to be true, and cling to the hope that they might, they don't. But we do them anyway because they give us hope. And if we don't have hope, then we have nothing.

Here is hoping that 2012 will bring you and your families everything you are hoping for.