I’m laying down on my bed as I write this, surrounded by pillows, covered in one of the most comfortable blankets in our home ( it was in a closet, no one was using it, so now it’s mine – no harm, no foul ), my go-to comfortable slouchy beanie on my head.
I was scrolling through my Instagram feed, looking at all the people I follow, and, since it’s January 1st, 2019, reading the occasional but unavoidable posts on New Year resolutions.
I left the site.
You see, after I was diagnosed with Major Depression and adult ADHD, and after talking to my psychiatrist and my friends and family, I realized three things about myself:
– Being on social media for long periods of time becomes a sensory and information overload for me.
– I’m an empathetic person.
– I’m a natural problem solver.
I’ve always been a pretty good speed reader since I was a child, but now that I’m on my ADHD medication, I can take in and process a greater amount of information a lot faster.
So, with that particular combination, taking in and processing too much information and/or too much emotional information means that my head becomes filled with people’s problems that I either want to solve, or that I feel terrible about, and I know there’s nothing I can do about it.
So, what’s the point of all this?
I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions.
I definitely believe that the very nature of the winter/holiday season lends itself to self-reflection, self-assessment.
Nature lies dormant, weathering out the cold until the sun’s warmth returns. All we see around us are ( mostly ) bare trees, slate gray skies, snow, if you’re lucky.
The calendar year, arbitrarily beginning in January, in the middle of seasonal winter, also forces us to feel as if we only have three hundred and sixty-five days to undergo some sort of amazing transformation, and as a result, forces us to feel as if we are some kind of failure in the eyes of our peers.
Social media only heightens this perceived pressure.
Many movies and shows make us feel that our lives are supposed to have a clear, definite beginning, middle, and end.
So after struggling for years, we’re told that we are supposed to overcome our problems, our weaknesses, our illnesses, our addictions, in a much shorter span of time, then proclaim ourselves free, new and improved, washed clean of the stains of our personal problems.
People in the public eye, be they celebrities or politicians, love to broadcast that narrative, and by doing so, make us believe that it’s the norm.
I don’t know about you, but I hate deadlines.
I love guidelines, but deadlines are crap.
Having depression has made me realize that growth is not a linear thing.
Spending time out in my backyard almost every day for the past year and a half, watching the leaves and flowers sprout and bloom, wither and fall, then sprout and bloom again, watching the constellations revolve above me, has taught me that growth is cyclical.
Growth is not linear.
That idea was the creation of some white scientist centuries ago whose belief system was a locked, rigid, racist, classist, patriarchal ideology. That idea, that way of thinking, is wrong.
Growth is cyclical.
We set a goal for ourselves. We often invariably fail at least once, if not more. We achieve that goal. But it’s rarely ever just one goal at a time. It’s many.
It’s growth in our careers, yes, but it’s also growth within ourselves, and without.
Growth in our interpersonal relationships.
Growth as men and women.
Growth in realizing our gender and sexual identity.
Growth in realizing just where exactly it is we belong on this insane planet, third from the sun.
Growth in being a good person to those who are good to you.
Growth in realizing the harmful, toxic behaviors we learned through nurturing by our parents, guardians, parent figures; and then trying to break ourselves free from those behaviors so we don’t hurt our loved ones the way we were hurt. The way our parents or parent figures hurt each other.
Growth is spirals.
It’s tree rings, stacked from its base, from its roots, raising high up towards the sky.
We grow in spirals.
And, more often than not, our growth process is represented as many spirals, rising and falling, loosening and tightening, as we try to discover and learn and figure out and master all the complex aspects of ourselves.
We spiral upward. We fall down, and we get back up again.
I have never followed the crowd.
I do things when I want to do them.
I do things when I am ready to do them.
And when I do, I do them slowly, over time.
But I do them.
I do not measure my success by the successes of others. I measure my success by how and what I do today versus how and what I did yesterday.
I spiral.
I rise.
I fall.
I forgive myself.
I analyze and see what went wrong, what I can do differently – not better.
Then I rise again.
And I don’t stop.
I may take breaks, but I never stop. I meditate. I try to keep my mind present. I always ask myself:
“Is what I’m doing truly making me happy?”
“Is what I’m doing hurting anyone?”
And I adjust, as needed. I take time to make sure I do everything I have to do, to learn everything I have to learn, to practice everything I have to practice.
But I do it at my pace, for myself, and not for anyone else, and definitely not so I can crow about it on social media.
So, do you honestly believe that pushing yourself doggedly, cruelly, without ever taking a moment to stop, enjoy, and feel the fulfillment of achieving a goal is going to create a kinder, happier, more loving you?
Instead of making resolutions that, by definition, are designed to fail, designed to make you feel terrible about yourself, don’t you think that you should simply work on being the best person you can be every day?
Don’t you think that’s better than saying, “Oh well, I’ll just try next year,” the very first time you break your resolution – in February?
Don’t you think you should do it in small, achievable steps?
Don’t you think you should nurture yourself?
Don’t you think you should be more patient, more kind to yourself?
Don’t you think you should be more forgiving with yourself?
Don’t you think you deserve it?
I know you do.
marcwritesmoorewords 