Friday Nudge - New Year’s Eve Edition
Photograph ©2007 David Bivins
I’ll be honest: in my later heavy-drinking days, I usually skipped New Year’s Eve. I still drank on some of them, but not for sport. My latter-day drinking was rarely social. I did most of it alone, without any sense of celebration. Several times I participated in a New Year’s meditation sit with Brooklyn Zen Center, where we sat for several hours, from New Year's Eve through to the new year. No drinking there.
I know that for many people, including those struggling with sobriety, New Year’s Eve is a “last hurrah,” one last binge before the New Year’s Resolution kicks in and a new era of health blossoms. I’m not trying to disguise my irony because we all know how these resolutions usually go.
We don’t need a last hurrah. We can stop behavior that hurts us quietly, without drama, without pounding a stake into the ground. There’s nothing magical about going out with a bang.
Decades ago, I found a perfect pack of Polaroid peel-apart film, still sealed in the box, with the original price sticker, expired in the late 1960s. There was no way it was useful anymore as film, but it was unspoiled and (to me) precious. It fit with my lifestyle as a photographer and frequent Polaroid user and collector.
I moved that pack of film with the rest of my belongings five times, each time finding a safe spot for it despite its uselessness. At some point I became the steward of this object and saw myself as having been appointed to keep it safe. I was no longer keeping it because it was enjoyable or added to my collection. I was keeping it because I was obligated to do so. How could I cast out something I had cared for so long? That had survived its journey from a factory in Massachusetts to a drug store in Michigan to an amateur photographer’s leather case to a garage sale to a young photography nut’s shelf, etc.? Who was I to pull the plug on that?
I built up a sense of value for this object. It had survived so long and in such good condition that it must be worth something. A couple of years ago I realized I had to let it go and I put it up on eBay for little more than the price of shipping, thinking that some collector or movie prop stylist might want it. I relisted it for several months. No one wanted it.
So I threw it in the garbage.
This object had served me for maybe a few minutes, when I first acquired it and wondered at its history. After that brief moment, it was a burden.
Do you have anything that you carry around with a sense of obligation that might be false? Do you wait for the “right moment” to set it free? To set yourself free? Think about it.
Now is a great moment. Now is the right moment.
My plan for tonight is wonderful: dinner with the family, maybe watch something fun on TV, in bed by 10:30.
Whatever your plans for tonight are, please be safe and love yourself and those around you. I’m not just talking about drinking—this virus is no joke and gathering in crowds doesn’t seem wise right now regardless of vaccinations or masks.
I love you,
David
