Happy New Cheer

New Year’s morning, 2024. 

Squinting crustily between the bedroom shutter blinds. A breaking day as dark and unpromising as the last one on the previous calendar. Hah!

Drowsy and red-eyed I might well be, but sure don’t see no rosy-dawned new horizon out there, pilgrim.

Not even the faintest echo of a clarion call to a fresh beginning.

Paradise tomorrow, maybe, huh?

So much for last night’s clinking New Year’s margaritas and exuberant smacker on the cushioned cusp of Anne’s ruby lips and the unsullied new year.

“Hold on, you old so-and-so,” said the preposterously optimistic part of me now, standing up to my snarling inner grouch.

“We can still do this.”

Taken aback, the blowhard bully slunk away, only to be replaced by the whining teen: “Ah, do we have to?”, as we all turned to the paradise now of that wonderfully plump, beckoning bed.

“No, steady on. Small steps, like we agreed yesterday” …

Oh I had meant it all so sincerely last night: do better, live better, love better. Forgive my enemies, love my friends … or was it the other way around?

Dialled it all down and everything. No cracked promises to shake off every ounce of heartfelt cynicism or work puny optimism into beefy, lasting bonhomie.

No rash, doomed vows to really go for it blind and brave in 2024.

No, there would be no year of living dangerously. Rather a year of being just a little bit more brave.

A year of revelling in the little exhilarations of conquering daft inhibitions and doing something a bit out of your ordinary.

Tiny, tiny braveries.

Like wearing that mustard-coloured jumper. The one that had you wondering if you are ‘acting the younger fella’. Even though your best friend complimented it, and your wife loves it

Done that one already …

Twirling my moustache in Laughing Cavalier fashion, pretending I’m just being high-spirited but secretly feeling a bit dashing  … and going out like that …

Um, my wife thinks it’s cool, but maybe hold off on that one a while.

But feck it, turn it all on its head: when you’re apprehensive and scared of things, everything is an adventure, right? You’re feeling it, living it. Okay, and bricking it. But that’s living too.

Resist putting small things off.

Same with bigger things … let these minor recalibrations feed into the things you really care about.

Like writing down this kind of stuff.

The day outside is clearing now, just as hope and vitality stretch their legs and all is brighter within.

Heading for the shower rather than back to bed. Reversal of fortune in such a small gesture of expectation and conviction to self.

Nobody’s perfect, they say … only really do try and get used to that. Be genuinely okay with it. Yourself or others

Remembering what John Prine said: “You are what you are, and you ain’t what you ain’t?”

How bloody liberating is that, when you think about it?

Life is a bit of an arena, and arenas can be challenging places. But really, there’s no other place to be.

Answer bullshit and bigotry a bit louder. In public,

My heart jumped when I read that one back. Truly scary.

But truly doable.

Admit and grapple with the complexities of knowledge, rather than trying to obliterate your daughter’s argument, just because.

Because what? She might be right. So what if you are the parent?

 Remember when we were small kids and everything outside seemed mysterious and magical? 

Picking up slimy, perfect leaves in the park, and staring at that perfection. In ordinary awe.

I still do that now … only not enough.

More of this!

Smelling those yellow flowers in the kitchen that time. Inhaling their scent. And the disappointment of the ones that smelled of … nothing really.

I’m still that boy.

The joy of the different birdsongs … like discovering new singers or writers.

I think I have been noticing these brilliant little things more. Or again.

Letting my fingers linger on the barks of the trees in our local park … deciphering them like a blind person reading braille, and feeling the small and major differences between husks.

I’m too old to climb these trees, but not too old to appreciate the winter quell of dormant growth and inevitable renewal, excited at the thought of the long, short wait for full exuberant foliage, and the abundant leaves shaking like soft maracas when the time is ripe.

And the sea will be calling soon … not just to walk along its sonorous, frothy edges, but to immerse myself once again in the shrill, exhilarating swell … hopping in and out first as if your toe was grabbed by a crab , and staying a little longer each time … 

Quiet braveries.

And more, please more, little joys and epiphanies.

A perfect soft-boiled egg, or a ‘juicy egg’ as my little self perfectly put it long, long ago, when my senses were young and unbridled.

Crunching through frosty gravel with the enthusiasm of our beloved Lily and Bella, who leap with the same unbridled enthusiasm out the morning door each day.

Staring up at that quartering moon, and picking out those star formations …

Resisting the urge to try and turn this into a lesser Desiderata or Sunscreen.

Just think of the little things, the little things that colour us vivid.

Fill in the rest as you go.

Yes, we can do this …

Happy New Year!!!