Anew

It’s the second day of the second half of the year, and I just finished cleaning my room. No, I didn’t wait that long just for me to go pick up a broom and clean up my room. I do that quite often. It’s just that this time, I cleaned up my room as thoroughly as I possibly could, with all my consciousness and intentions and energy evocatively poured into all of it. It didn’t just involve dusting off the shelves or changing the curtains or sweeping the floor. Every wipe of the wet rag, every sweep of the broom, every fold of the blanket, was a meaningful symbolism, a self defined metaphor for being reborn and starting anew.

I started it all yesterday, the first day of the rest of the year. Early in the morning, while electricity all over the city temporarily disappeared as scheduled, I already found myself dramatically tearing down the intricately designed green wallpaper I arduously put up just before the year began. I must admit I felt a little bad having to say goodbye to the elaborate drawings that covered my wall for the past few months. I’ve always been clingy. But it was time for it to go. Now that the year is halfway through, it’s time for another change, another chance to look at life from a different perspective, especially during what remains of the rest of this year, and part of that change is learning to let go of the little things I’ve grown unnecessarily attached to.

Now I assume most people find nothing significant about the leaving of May and the coming of June because it is, after all, just one of those times once each month where you should flip the page of the calendar to forever forget the days that have already come to pass and remind yourself of the days to come, to keep track of the present and remain connected to the web of time and space as it presently is. To some it may signal the end of a long summer vacation and returning to academic imprisonment, I mean progression. To me, however, it has come to mean an entirely different thing. It is more than just a mere calculated shift in the numbering of the days and the phases of the moon and the comings and goings of the tides.

It is a chance to leave behind the past and reveal the future. It means getting a chance to wipe out all that have happened, and prepare the newly blank slate for whatever new learnings that will be scribbled on it. It symbolizes another beginning, one after the previous beginning that was the New Year, as every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s inevitable end. It is a time to purge my little space of all the old, exhausted and negative energies and fill it up with a new and vibrant aura. It is a time for me to bid farewell to the dust and dirt of the past and make room for whatever new particles the future will bring.

I find it a way of looking back, a way of reminding myself of where I started and how far I’ve come since then, and a way of bracing myself for all the overwhelmingly wonderful surprises ahead. Which is just what I need, really. I’ve been somewhat troubled lately. I feel like I’ve been going around in ever shrinking circles, not really getting anywhere, finding myself in the same place I thought I had already left, a place I thought I’ve long gone far away from. I feel like emptying myself out, picking up all the good pieces and then throwing everything else away. Although I reckon I might just end up keeping everything anyway and putting them all back in, given the way I always see some good in everything, having some use or purpose even for the most unwanted of garbage. Either way, I‘ve been feeling the need to stop going forward for now, go back and take a good look inside myself, analyze everything flying around in the swirling chaos that is my mind and arrange them alphabetically inside a mental file cabinet of sorts. It sounds weird I know.

But I read that having feelings of retrogression like this isn’t unusual, especially now when the planet Mercury is in astrological retrograde, a period when most areas ruled by the planet also experience a reverse in direction. Among these areas include communication, travel, business and the mind’s processes. I don’t exactly know how all this works in the grand scheme of things but it makes sense to me. This explains why most of us, like me, tend to think more, especially about things we haven’t completely figured out just yet, things we’ve pushed aside and left hanging, waiting for completion and decent closure. This also explains why we’ve been having all these inconveniences related to telecommunications, technology that deals with information, and the like. As I’m writing this I’m even making sure to save it every few sentences, as glitches and little inconveniences are to be expected.

Nevertheless, there’s always a reason to start anew. Especially if you go looking for it. For me, the fact that it’s the first day of the rest of my life is enough reason to take a deep breath, exhale all the air I’ve already used to the deepest of my cells, return it to nature where it can be rejuvenated, and breathe in new air that will seep into every microscopic element of my being and refresh me in ways that will ultimately prepare me for all that lies ahead. Every day is a new beginning, no matter which week or month it falls on. I think that’s why every day sees an end at dawn, the sun finally setting to take away with it everything that happened and leaving behind a dark emptiness with which to begin tomorrow, a night to usher in another morning. With that, yesterday becomes a memory and tomorrow a promise. I think that’s more than enough reason to start anew. Every chance we get.