These Nights
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 VARIOUS Let's cut a rug Rare Original LP US $54.99
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 THE WHO Quadrophenia 2xLP French Original 1979 OST US $29.99
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Well Happy into-the New Year! Don't know about you, but I love the post-holiday period. Since mid December, I've put off tasks which used to have an urgent feel. I answer email more slowly. I settle into the now. I inhale juicy optimism.
For the third year in a row, I spent New Year's eve on my own. Saw friends early. Then made a nice meal. Sipped Prosecco and watched Rescue Me (on loan from a friend who spent New Years without her boyfriend happily watching my copy of Six Feet Under). Was in bed by 11:00.
This may sound strange to some, but this choice felt empowering to me.
My New Years haven't always been peaceful, solitary, or empowering. In my twenties, I cooked for hoards of friends up north at the cottage. Once, I was up until 2:30 a.m. the night before prepping (I have a decadent food streak).
I've also done the couple-thing. Fondues have a particularly fond place in my memory. These nights were a balance of good friends, good conversation, elegance and intimacy.
Then there were ones I'd prefer to forget. Once as a young woman unhappy with her life, I went out for New Year's because my friends wanted me to. As the evening went on, I was feeling more and more alone among the party-set: I had to get out.
At midnight, I was driving alone on the highway crying. I couldn't have articulated it then, but pretending everything was fine when it wasn't felt excruciating to me. Note the word: Pretending.
"When one is pretending the entire body revolts." - Anais Nin
Before you think I'm bummed, this happened decades ago. Today I know that these moments of my life served a larger purpose: to nudge me to discover how not to pretend anymore.
Isn't that what growing up is all about? Yet, how many of us as adults pretend the day away, constantly doing what we don't want to do with people we'd rather not do it with.
Holidays can intensify the good. They can also bring to the surface the icky stuff lurking below. During holidays, joy feels more sweet. Despair is harder to hide. Is it any coincidence that relationships break-up during this time? And even good ones can be strained?
On the other hand, is it any wonder that many engagements are announced? Declarations of love made?
There's a scene I wrote where one of my main characters watches his wife's face as she sleeps. In a surreal moment, he believes he sees a rubber mask on her skin. It's a creepy scene. As friend and facilitator Cynthia Barlow says: 'it's really hard to kiss through cardboard.'
"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." - James Arthur Baldwin
I remember with great love and compassion now, the young woman who wasn't always in a great frame of mind over the holidays. The reasons don't matter now. Perhaps she just broke up with someone. Perhaps it was her job. Perhaps it was the lack of direction in her life, or the lack of belief in herself. Perhaps it was because Pretending became too heavy for her, or perhaps it was a sticky mix of all of the above.
As I fleed from a "woo-hoo" crowd in my twenties, as I wound down my cottage New Years tradition as I approached 30, each time my mask-of-the-day cracked and precipitated change. Ever since then, bit by bit, I've been discovering what's underneath.
Who am I when I'm not Pretending? A person who values solitude, or real connection over small-talk. Someone who makes choices rather than bowing to obligation. Someone who can both be shy, and kinda gutsy. Someone who still cooks for those she loves.
What do I do differently today? I acknowledge that contentment (and misery) is generated from the inside out, not the other way around. Even though I can't change everything, I can change my relationship toward it. I also appreciate the people in my life more today - because they may not be here next year. Life can be like that.
FOR YOU
Where do you Pretend in your life? Where is your mask the heaviest? Are you ready to drop the extra weight you're carrying? Of those weighty things you cannot change, how would it feel to consciously choose those things instead of dreading them?
What have a lifetime of New Years' eves taught you about yourself? What's working? What would you like to do differently?
"The closing years of life are like a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped" - Arthur Schopenhauer
As the year unfolds, as your pace speeds up, remember how the post-holiday stillness feels.
If you want more of that feeling, know that the smallest shifts inside you now, will facilitate decisions with expansive possibility.
Wishing you oodles of joy - all year 'round.
Karen M. Black is a novelist and may be the only karmic astrologer with an MBA.
She received her MBA in marketing from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and worked as a communication consultant in the Canadian pension and benefit industry since 1992.
In 2007, Karen self-published her debut novel Moondance, which won a number of awards in 2008 and 2009, including third grand prize for fiction at the Next Generation Indie book awards, bronze for Visionary fiction at the IPPY awards and finalist in the Romance category at Foreward Magazine's Book of the Year awards.
Moondance is a freethinking, emotionally-charged, highly addictive spin on life, love and the nature of reality. It was written for anyone who's had their heart broken by life and love and had the curiosity and the courage to ask why. MOONDANCING is Karen's free ezine, helping women entrepreneurs create the love their souls intended.
Purchase Moondance and learn more about Karen and karmic astrology at http://www.karenmblack.com
Subscribe to IDEAS (free) at http://www.karenmblack.com/your_free_stuff/index.html
Whats On My YouTube Today?
These Are The Nights [HQ] w/ Lyrics
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