How About New Year’s Questions, Instead of Resolutions…?

I am not a big fan of classic New Year’s resolutions à la ‘From January the 1st I will exercise twice a week.’ I don’t believe that the calender switch from one year to the other provides enough reason for change. If I want to really begin exercising, I can use every day to start and don’t have to wait for a new year. If I don’t want to start exercising, then I won’t, independent of a date in the calender.

However, I think that the beginning of a new year can be an opportunity to reflect on our life and our state of mind (and, equally important, our state of heart). It is a chance to take stock, ask ourselves questions and listen deeply to the answers – or keep the question in us, until the answer will arise.

As Rilke put it so beautifully: “Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.”

Here are some suggestions for ‘New Year Questions.’

– What really matters to me?
– Am I spending enough of the time and energy that is available to me on that which matters?
– Which change do I want to see in the world?
– Which contributions (big or small) can I make to be part of the change I want to see?
– Am I making enough time to listen to my inner life or am I busy distracting myself from it?
– What contributes to more calm and clarity in my life? In which ways can I strengthen that?
– What contributes to me losing my peace of mind? Which are the factors I have an influence on?
– Are there areas in my life in which I have become rigid? What would be a really fresh way of looking at a situation?
– Are there situations in my life in which I would benefit from letting go of the idea that I can control the outcome?
– If I only had another year to live: What would be the one thing I would do?

May we live the questions and invite the answers.
Happy New Year 2023!