Is Bringing in the New Really New?

 

Instead of setting goals in the new year, why not try setting a new perspective? The following invites you to do just that!

January is always an interesting time of the year.  Some people set goals, others are still recovering from 2024, and many of us think of it as just another month, though we must remember that pesky 5 at the end of the year!  As many of you know, one of my passions is transitions.  Given the times we are in politically, as well as physically (some of us) and structurally, it is now time to realize why that is so important.

There is a metaphor I was struck by in Universal Human, by Gary Zukov.  (an important book if you are interested in such things!)

“I discovered a once beautiful dilapidated house in a coastal town in Northern California.  That town was my new home.  Close yet remote from San Francisco, it gave me respite from my life in the City.  I loved its isolation, its sense of community, and its intimate relationship with the ocean.  I supposed these were the things that had brought people to it for decades, and had now brought me. 

The house was condemned.  Yellow tape cordoned off the weed-covered yard and a broad porch beyond it.  It was a Victorian house, like many I had seen in San Francisco.  Gingerbread trim connected lathed porch pillars, and a round turret with a conical top gave it an elegant distinction.  I could imagine stained glass in the windows.  From the sidewalk where I stood, the old house continued to exude the gaudy tastefulness of that era.  It was clearly the summer house of some wealthy family.  It had a family feel about it.

I liked the house immediately.  I knew that the ocean view from the back would be magnificent.  I could not imagine why someone had not renovated it long ago.  In my fantasy, I imagined doing just that.  I walked down the winding road to the beach to get another view of the house.  I looked up, and I gasped.

The house, once separated from the edge of the cliff by a large yard, extended precariously over empty space! Cantilevered on a rotting understructure, half of it hovered over a void between exposed underflooring and the rocky beach below.  It seemed to float high above me, as though about to journey seaward like a hot air balloon.  It was, in fact, ready to plunge downward, and its doom was imminent.

Spectacularly poised at the moment of demise, the house stood on a precipice like a trapeze artist high above a hushed crowd.  This surreal apparition of majestic ignorance and impending disaster hung suspended against a vacant sky.  The cordoned beach silently awaited the massive intruder.  As the cliff continued to erode imperceptibly, more under flooring imperceptibly became exposed.  Faded signs and yellowed tape on the rocks testified to the longevity of this slow-motion drama. 

None of this was visible from the top of the cliff.  Tape and cones kept passersby on the sidewalk, overgrowth concealed the ocean behind the house, and nowhere was the problem of the missing cliff apparent.  Only a sad and broken façade of a once happy structure remained on the otherwise pleasant street. The sea had taken the ground on which the house had stood.  Soon, it would take the house.  Once solid and strong, it would become unstable and weak, and its own weight would soon bring it down.  Nothing could prevent it.”

This metaphor has transformed how I see almost everything. It would be easy to say this (whatever this is) should not be happening, and I/we need to double and triple our efforts to bring things back to how they used to be. However, I find, if I look closely, the new is also more and more apparent. Rather than look for reasons that things are falling apart (politics, media, housing, etc.) I find it much more hopeful to engage my creativity to see how we might come together to refocus on achievable goals in whatever happens to catch our eye, so that we shift our focus and effort away from the doomed and the impossible.

Our job now seems to be, how do we allow the old way to collapse as safely as possible, all the while planning for cleanup efforts and how to build what we can now see is possible in its place?