The Beginning of the End (or the End of the Beginning?)
The beginning and end of the year can be trying time for most of us. In fact, time relentlessly passing and change in general are a challenge. Questioning our assumptions about the beginning and end of things can be the start of a healing process.
It is but two months since we celebrated New Year’s: A strange arbitrary thing, this celebration! It’s a number forming part of a counting system of which only some of us know the origins. A whole mindverse is created around this. Just think; there are 364 other days that could have been the first day of the year. What a coincidence that the day we call the 1st of January is THE day!
We humans can believe ourselves into anything!
The other day a good friend of mine told me that she finds the first few weeks of any year especially painful: “The holidays are over and return to work” phase. And, she added, she knew that after a few days (or weeks) of working on her bad attitude, she would be able to take up the old yoke and start ploughing the fields once again (with at least some enthusiasm).
I identified with her view of things. For long years through my life now, I have been suffering from the ripple effects of the beginning and end of year and all that it holds.
But time passes and we get past February. Momentum gathers, the year gallops on in earnest and in a blur so that we presently arrive at November. By this time, we are so burnt out that we cannot anymore. We slave away. We are finishing off. Fever in the air! We compete, complete and consolidate! We also have numerous parties during which we bid each other farewell, solemnly and with a little ache in the heart. Another year is past. Another year is looming. Next year we have to make things count!
Just before things finally fall apart, the work-year grinds to a halt and the holidays are approaching. Now we have the impossible task of relaxing on demand. But don’t let your guard down too much! Sometimes Christmas Time, the traditional time of peace, can be fraught with mental anguish.
But Christmas also passes and we have come a full circle: Again, it is New Year’s Eve. On the first day of January, a large percentage of the world’s population is hungover and in a state of limbo. On the second day of the year, everybody foolishly creeps out of their holes.
And then we return to work. We try and support ourselves mentally with New Year’s resolutions which, at most, last for a month. Their death is another cruel nail in the coffin of our immediate state of mind.
February arrives. Speed picks up and so must we.
And so on and on.
Four months of the year (that is a third of the year) we agonise either over making it to the end of the year or over how to enjoy the brief respite between our normal lives and New Year’s.
The rest of the year, we flog ourselves into higher productivity and the endless commitment to commitments. We have to rush because we know; we close our eyes for just a moment and it all slips by like a flash, without us noticing.
Many of us dream of getting off the treadmill, but how? Is there perhaps a secret way of knowing that could help? Is there a golden thread that could lead to the unravelling of the web?
When we are faced with challenges we tend to speed up. But sometimes life’s blows are so severe that we are forcefully brought to a halt. This might seem like a disaster. It also can be life-changing.
Can we, when we are muddled and stirred up become quiet? Do we have enough patience to wait for our mud to settle? If we can keep quiet, very quiet, like a mouse, like when we played hide-and-seek as children and it was your turn to hide perhaps? Remember? You had to even breathe quietly not to be discovered. How aware you were in that moment!
If we can enter into our silence with the serious-mindedness of children, who believe that they can recreate the world with a thought, then we might be lucky enough to land up in front of a peculiar kind of mirror, showing up our basic assumptions about life.
Here are some of my reflections:
• Is it really true that the “big” ends and beginnings are bigger than the “small” ones?
• Does the process of completion and beginning necessarily have to imply pain?
• Does completion really mean the end of things?
• Is there a way not to live in perpetual fear of time passing, old age creeping closer and then, death?
• Do we have to accept that we have no choice but to be obedient little dogs repeating yearly the same tricks we have been taught since childhood?
• Is it really necessary to be unhappy in order to be “realistic”?
You don’t even need to find answers. Just ask the questions, your own questions, but ask them seriously.
Rina is a qualified Psychologist (Counselling), based in Robindale, Randburg, South Africa.
With a commitment to mental health, Ms van der Watt provides services in Afrikaans and English, including Assessment, Counselling, Ukraine Aid, Mindfulness and Treatment (Therapeutic).
Ms van der Watt has expertise in Abuse (Emotional / Physical), Adolescent Counselling, Anxiety Disorders, Autism and Developmental Difficulty, Depression, Trauma Counselling and Vocational Assessment.
Click here to schedule a session with Ms van der Watt.
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