Resolutions, Vision Boards and Other Voodoo

"Your can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes...." The Rolling Stones

I’ve spent the past week struggling to find a word for 2024.

THE word that will encapsulate all the hopes, dreams and plans I have for the coming year.

When I did vision boards it was slightly easier.  My child self-loved the glue sticks and getting to eviscerate colorful magazines.  I could also put seemingly contradictory images on the board without fear that the cosmos would wobble on its axis. 

In my vision board reality, the man of my dreams really will just show up while I also spend all my free evenings at home in sweats curled up with a good book.

Unfortunately, vision boards are so last decade and all the cool kids now come up with a word for the year.

That feels like a lot of pressure to put on some letters of the alphabet.  It also brings up all my fears of commitment – a whole year?  I have to commit to 365 days with ONE word?

I can imagine having a word of the day – actually, that might be a fun experiment – what would happen if I decided that I was going to make the Wordle word the theme of my day?

“I’m sorry, I can’t come into work today I’m working on my inner S-L-O-T-H.”

“Honey, you’re overreacting.  Yes, I was talking to that guy at the coffee shop but it was just a harmless, F-L-I-R-T.”

Maybe this isn’t a good idea.

I decide to pull out my Scrabble game hoping that perhaps if I put my fingers on the tiles they will move Ouija style into a word that will speak to me.

What exactly am I seeking?

What are we all hoping to gain by our new year’s resolutions, vision boards and word searches.

For me when I’m being aspirational it’s because I don’t know how or believe I can just go out and make something happen on my own.

I don’t need vision board voodoo to order a pizza I just pick up the phone.

It’s funny then that I, or anyone for that matter, would want to start the year validating feelings of powerlessness.

I realize some people don’t see it as voodoo but consider these end of year rituals an exercise in practical goal setting and focused intentionality – lose ten pounds, achieve an extra twenty thousand in revenue, improve your golf handicap.  But then what? 

What do we hope will be the result if we do meet our goals by year end? 

Aren’t all goals just dressed up attempts to somehow make ourselves feel better than we do now?  Otherwise, why bother?

Yet, we all know that feelings are ephemeral.  We get something we’ve always wanted; achieve a goal and we’re good for a while and then the restlessness creeps in again.

Even worse is when we realize how much of our wanting has an element of fantasy to it.  When I put a picture of a serene beach scene on my vision board I’m clearly ignoring the sunburn, the mosquitoes and the sand everywhere.

Perhaps that’s it. 

Perhaps I just don’t trust myself to know what I want or what’s good for me.

After all it’s called a mid-life crisis for a reason, right?

I have some clarity about what I no longer want ~ what is no longer working for me ~ but that isn’t the same as having a vision for what I do want. It doesn’t help matters that life is messy and even the best of things have less than positive aspects. Cue the mosquitoes.

I think that’s one of the problems with mid-life.  We’re no longer the younger, naïve and hopelessly romantic versions of ourselves that we once were. 

We’ve been through some shit. 

We’ve had dreams and visions that have not turned out as we expected. We’ve wanted things that in the end weren’t exactly good for us.

How can we trust ourselves and our goals for the future when our pasts are littered with thirty odd years of mistakes?

I suppose it depends on our definition of a mistake.  If we believe the goal of our lives and our choices is happiness then most of us are on shaky ground.  Sadly, most advertising and the entire self-help industry wants to hook us with this expectation.

Luckily, I believe most of us are savvier than this.  We see the lure of happiness as the false prophet it is.

Instead I believe our deeper longing is much harder to achieve. Our deepest longing is for our lives to have mattered.  Not even in some big way – most of us don’t expect to be a Jane Goodall or a Fatou Bensouda – but more, we hope that at the end of our days we can look back on our lives and see a certain perfection to it.

That we will see how all the plot twists that were so confusing and hard at the time were also somehow necessary. That amidst the ups and downs, the trials and the tribulations it was somehow inexplicably good.

That we were necessary in some small way to world around us. 

Sadly, I don’t think that is an experience we can will into existence with a new year’s resolution.  How do you find a magazine image for inner “ok-ness”?

It will come ~ if it comes ~ with time and hindsight and perhaps a little bit of grace.

With that I stopped looking for a word. 

I closed my magazines and I went out for a walk. 

The sky was a brilliant glow of red.  There was trash in the street and the sweet smell of night jasmine.  My neighbours dogs barked insanely and I could faintly see Venus in the night sky.

I walked and for the first time in a while felt deep inside of me that no matter what the next year brought even if it wasn’t my preference that it would be ok ~ that I would be ok ~ and for the moment that was enough.