Many people spend New Year’s Eve surrounded by many people, drinking and cheering and anxiously anticipating the midnight blow. Okay, but it’s not the only way to spend tonight, which seems significant because it promises a fresh start, but it often ends up leaving us drained, with an incurable hangover and barely able to put together the decision to make the snack, let alone -only ready to implement ambitious resolutions.
Another option is to do it your way, making this a night of preparation and contemplation. While it may not seem glamorous to spend your evening on homework while friends go out bubbling and shooting, chances are then you’ll feel fantastic, refreshed, and ready for the next year. The partygoers will already be releasing new penitents.
Perform these rites to start the year off right:
Make space
Lighten your load of material to create space for what the new year will bring you. The more you like things, the more likely you are to have too many. Grab it from Marie Kondo, a woman with a mania for the organization that sold the world with life-changing magic to fix, cleaning the space makes a house “experts joy.”
By messing up, you will feel less burdened by your merchandise and can do a little good. Get rid of the books you’ve read, the clothes you no longer wear, the gadgets and tchotchkes you don’t use, and find out where to give them. Books can go to a small free local library, clothing and household items at a Goodwill or second-hand delivery store. Garbage can only be swept away.
Clean house
Pour in some wine if you want, play music and start scrubbing: put the pile of rubbish on the desk, wash the dishes, sweep the floor, take out the rubbish, bleach, glaze, wash the clothes and change the sheets. Cleaning the house for the new year is a perfect way to start 2020.
It is both a practical and contemplative practice. In the words of the Japanese Zen Buddhist monk Shoukei Matsumoto, “We sweep dust to remove our worldly desires. We scrub the dirt to free ourselves from accessories.”
If you feel particularly ambitious and sorcerer, consider moving some of your furniture and burning sage, an ancient spiritual ritual, and a medicinal practice that dates back to ancient Egypt to clean a space.
This way, your site will look, smell and feel healthy and fresh.
Water rites
Now it’s time to relax. Take a meditation vacation at home. Take a bath or shower in the shower, enjoying your clean, bright space, the clean clothes that await you and the feeling of being in the water.
“The shower is a proxy for the … ocean,” according to the marine biologist and author of the 2014 book Blue mind, Wallace Nichols. “Get in the shower and get rid of the visual stimulation of your day … it’s a steady stream of ‘blue noise.’ Don’t listen to voices or process ideas. Get in the shower and it’s like a mini vacation.”
Therapy session
He grabs a pen and paper and starts scribbling. Think about the year that just passed, the highs and lows, the surprises, what you didn’t know or couldn’t have predicted, and what you wish you had done differently. It is not a work of literature. It’s a flow of awareness, so don’t worry about formulating fantastic phrases or following a timeline. Let your thoughts flow freely for about 30 minutes as a kind of meditation. Write about what you want to improve on next year, what you fear and get bored of, where you want to go and expect it to happen, who you want to be, what you want to see, how you would like to treat other people and yourself.
The act of writing, especially by hand, frees your mind, helps you process emotions, and turns abstract thoughts into concrete words. It is therapeutic.
Letting go
You and your space are completely clean, you have scribbled your thoughts and you are ready to release them. Now, you can go out on New Year’s Eve and perform the final rite while doing gentle exercise. Before you go, grab matches or a lighter and the pages you wrote.
Whatever the weather, stroll contemplatively. Look at the stars, talk to the moon, ask yourself what next year will bring, formulate your resolutions or a thesis on life, or clear your mind completely. Physical activity will lift your mood and start the year on your right foot, literally.
When you reach a safe and quiet space, set your page cone on fire. Watch as the words turn to ashes and be sure to clear any lit embers (starting the year with a load of fire would be a suction)
Take a deep breath, look up at the sky and feel free.
Burning the pages frees your thoughts, releases your illusions, dreams and lamentations and is a powerful symbol of detachment. Remember that everything is fleeting and that next year it will disappear just like the latter.
Therefore, it is worth making the most of these moments.