I don't know if Erma was only popular in the US and Canada or you would have heard of her - she mostly wrote funny stuff - this was a bit deeper but good advice.
Leave Baggage Behind
For years, I’ve studied the symbol of the New Year – a smiling baby wearing a diaper and a top hat.
What does it mean? A beginning of life? A time of innocence? A scenario for change?
Then it hit me. For years, I’ve been overdressed for the New Year.
I enter it with shoulders bent, swathed in all the ills of the previous year, and when I can’t wear them all on my body, I lug them along in heavy boxes and suitcases, kicking them along with my foot to make sure all of them make it into the next year of my life.
Wrapped around my neck is a mantle of guilt, some of it going back as far as 1940. (Guilt for the time my parents gave me a savings bond for my high school graduation when I wanted a silver charm bracelet and I threw the savings bond on the floor. An oldie, but a goodie.)
The hair shirt of self-pity is uncomfortable, but for years has provided me with enough ammunition to bring tears to the eyes of my husband and children. To discard it would be unthinkable. After all, self-pity, if you do it right, takes a long time to amass.
The belt of prejudice is an old one and encompasses anyone who does not agree with every single world I have ever said. I’d feel naked without it.
The larger footlocker contains anger. True, a lot of it doesn’t fit anymore, but I hang onto it just in case I’m caught short.
Adorning all of this are the jewels of frustration over things that I can never do anything about, but which I wear like medals to torture myself.
And, of course, the biggest piece of baggage contains old grudges that I sift through each year like old photographs and pressed flowers... the critic who was unkind, the one mistake from a friend I want to forgive, the trust I gave a child that was abused, the harsh words from a family member that I refuse to forget. Grudges, many of them antiques, that I plan on handing down to my children.
Each year of my life, the load gets heavier and heavier to carry into the New Year. Once, around March, I almost sank, but stubbornly I hung onto every bit of New Years past.
Frankly, I don’t know if I can face the New Year without my clothes on. I don’t know if I can check into 1993 without luggage. Can I look at old friends and see them for the first time? Can I keep my eyes forward and not look back? Do I have the guts to emerge with nothing on but a smile and a top hat?
I’m gonna try.
