It’s a New Year. This is one of those times when we long for a fresh start. Often there are changes we know we need and want to make, but haven’t. We seem to save them for the New Year. Well, it’s here. And if you’d like to see real change in 2008, there is no better time to start than right now.
This column is about “Living Gracefully.” What does that mean? I intend “graceful” to describe a life well lived. Full—but not chaotic. Busy, but not insanely so. Fun, but responsible. Maybe a lighter life. Or put better, a life lived more lightly.
Don’t ballerinas seem to float gracefully across the stage? They look so poised, so delicate and free. And yet we know that beneath the wispy costume is a healthy, strong body making all the moves possible. The very lightness we perceive comes from strength, fitness and dedication to dance. Ballerinas are not lightweights!
That’s how we want our lives to be lead. Lovely to watch, to experience and participate in, but under girded with strength. A graceful life may look easy on the outside, because it lacks the continual drama of the life lived in chaos and crisis. But to live this way takes practice, trial and error, and time to learn to do it well.
But the payoff is incredible. A life lived gracefully can expand when need be, and retract when needed. Things that would be a crisis to many people are simply an unexpected event to the person living gracefully. They have the inner tools needed deal with the emergency and continue on.
You may have guessed by now that a graceful life is also an organized life. And a lot of living gracefully will have to do with using organizational skills to sort through your life for things you need and things you are ready to discard. As people who have taken my Organize Your Life! class know, I am a big fan of discarding things you don’t need.
So for this month I’d encourage each of you to look for things in your life you don’t need. If you’ve just taken down your Christmas decorations you may have experienced a moment of sheer delight that everything was gone! The clutter, the sparkling lights and bulbs competing for your attention, the piles of wrapping supplies stashed behind the couch. When all of this is gone you feel a great sense of relief. It’s peaceful now that the extraneous things have been removed. That feeling is the one I want you to find in every day living.
Now I like Christmas decorations. A lot! I have a great time decorating, entertaining, wrapping gifts. I like the whole Christmas thing. From the special church services, to the huge Christmas festival Parents & Kids puts on each year. But I also like it when everything is put away. In January, I enjoy a bare house. I don’t quickly return all my everyday decorative objects to their normal places. I live without them for a while. And it is so nice to enjoy the breathing room after the busy holidays.
So, this is my suggestion for you in January. Enjoy a bare January. Try to let go of all the extraneous things in your life. Purge clutter from your drawers and closets. Decline the invitation to an event you really don’t want to go to. Take everything you can to the recycle bin and let it go. Make it a special point to return anything you have borrowed. Don’t let that item take up your valuable space—return it to its rightful owner. Are there any Christmas gifts still undelivered? If time did not allow you to cross paths with everyone for whom you have a gift, mail it to them with a note that you’ve been thinking of them daily (you have—you’ve been feeling guilty about that undelivered gift for three weeks).
Let January be the time you clear things out of your life.
Of course, you’ll want to protect these new-found spaces in your life—it’s not necessary to rush out and find things and commitments to fill every gap in your life and calendar. So be sparing about accepting new commitments right now.
One reason to be sparing about it is, if you are like most of us, you have already planned to fill the new spaces with things you want to do better in 2008. Like eat healthfully, exercise more, read more, be more faithful to your friends. So let January be the time when you clear out things in your life to make room for better things.
Start now, today. Happy New Year.
