Some Thoughts for the New Year

“At this point in my life
I'd like to live as if only love mattered
As if redemption was in sight
As if the search to live honestly
Is all that anyone needs.” - At This Point in My Life by Tracy Chapman

From Life: Poems to help navigate life’s many twists & turns by Donna Ashworth

“Why do we start a new year, with promises to improve?

Who began this tradition of never-ending pressure?

I say the end of a year

should be filled with congratulation

for all we survived.

And I say a new year should start with promises to be kinder to ourselves

to understand better just how much we bear

as humans on this exhausting treadmill of life.

And if we are to promise more

let’s pledge to rest, before our bodies force us.

Let’s pledge to stop, and drink in life as it happens.

Let’s pledge to strip away a layer of perfection to reveal the flawed and wondrous humanity we truly are inside.

Why start another year

gifted to us on this earth

with demands on our already over-strained humanity?

When we could be learning to accept

that we were always supposed to be imperfect.

And that is where the beauty lives, actually.

And if we can only find that beauty

we would also find peace.

I wish you peace in 2023.

Everything else is all just a part of it.

Let it be so. - Donna Ashworth

https://amzn.eu/d/9Y6E6kz

ART BY Demelsa Haughton Illustration