Ridiculousness and courage are welcome in being who you are

The air of novelty that a turn of the year brings resembles the effects of a renewal of vows. It is, let us say, an opportunity. By way of analogy, a wedding ceremony by itself is powerless to bring about change in the couple, in the sense of expanded trust and reciprocity, and the resulting happiness of that expansion. A ceremony in itself is nothing, but the pair’s concentration on acquiring better awareness is. With the new year it is very similar.

It is entirely understandable to disdain counting time by the commercial calendar when what one intends is a free and fruitful life. A personal story could not be (but often is) subject to the mechanics of exhausting work: vacations, breaks and holidays. Things of this kind are very welcome, of course, but they almost always correspond to the logic of industry and consumption. Hence the proverb: “the more you have, the less you are.”

In these contexts, buying a new outfit for réveillon (New Year’s Eve) can be an ambivalent act. On one hand is the obligation to buy, the competition with the other party guests. On the other is a legitimate willingness for self-care, and for the outside to match the novelty of the innermost self.

To change years inside oneself requires a certain ridiculousness. That is, crossing the line of the ridiculous. Instead of a costume, dressing in what truly corresponds to who one is. It is not dressing up as being; it is being in essence. Something interesting is that what one wishes to be in the future can only be true if it is true right now. That is a very basic idea in philosophy. It is also true that if something ceased to be, it is because it never was.

What I called the ridiculous earlier could also be called courage. Putting on one’s own shoes, opening one’s chest: thinking, speaking, acting and celebrating from what one truly is, which always was and will be forever. But courage lies less in the behavioral aspect, which even a ham actor could play with complete cowardice, and much more in a permission for the individual spirit to communicate to the world what it came to do.