Out with the old. In with the new.

For someone who loves old homes, this idiom isn’t exactly on the tip of my tongue. Yet, it’s such a tempting outlook, deceptively liberating and positive. While I may not apply it to my surroundings, every year that mindset sends me into a stressful mental scurry the last week of December heading into the new year.

Because: this is the year I will get more organized. It’s this one. No, this one. I mean it this time—it’s this one.

Armed with the latest productivity planner, I typically wake early, head to the kitchen and tuck myself beside the pellet stove. Beneath a towering, old window I scribble away, making resolutions and goals and plans to meet those goals. Drawing mind maps with lots of circles. Making bulleted lists. Using words like “strategies” and “tactics.” Identifying “bad” habits to shed. (Spoiler: they’re the same every year.) “Good” habits to adopt and adding those to a wretched weekly tracker to make sure I’m on point.

Shoulders hunched, I curl over this planner, feeling the clawing weight of these trackers and lists and mind maps and calendars and meal planners and timelines.

All the while, the old window rattles, blowing cold drafts as if trying to wake me up.

I know your secret. The old window whispers. You don’t want to do this.

Is this how I want to spend my time—attempting to shape who I am; to “fix” or fit my self into a mass-printed planner with fill-in-the-bubble trackers like a middle-school multiple choice test? Shudder.

An outsider, repulsed by the chains of tradition, Anquetil urges Sebastian to join his next expedition. By foretelling his future, Anquetil warns Sebastian that ruling traditions will crush his young life. Expectations will suffocate him. His life will be planned…to death.

Unless he ventures into the unknown.

“…metaphorically, you will fall if you refuse. I shall look down, and I shall see a little black speck twirling, twirling down until it disappears into greater blackness, and that will be the free spirit of Sebastian gone for ever.”[1]

On my first read, I thought Anquetil embodied the idiom above—out with the old; in with the new—but after discussing the book with family, I reread that scene and realized that isn’t Anquetil’s point. He knows Sebastian belongs to Chevron and Chevron to Sebastian. His point is for Sebastian to gain experience and perspective. To know himself and what he’s made of: his character, his skills, his knowledge, his soul. His “structure” if you will.

By breaking from tradition, he’ll return to Chevron a better steward of the estate and his precious life.

Sebastian must break away from the planning. He must do the thing. Be creative. His own person.

Anquetil is charmed and horrified by Chevron in equal measure because he already has his own structure. He’s at home in his own skin: a middle-aged adventurer who knows what he values. He does the things. He lives. He faces new challenges with the structure he has. 

Year after year, it weathers the new and unknown—storms caused by mother nature or us scurrying humans renovating something. But its purpose and work endure. It provides a home. A beautiful place that is loved. A place full of light (albeit cold this time of year!) A place that echoes laughter and welcomes people. A place for celebration. A shelter for heartache. A solid refuge for healing.

Sure, there’s always something to fix. But the purpose, the structure with its character, quirks and all, remain unchanging.

So, through the old window, the frigid January light douses me with realization: I don’t need or want to bubble-track-circle-map myself into something I’m not. I don’t want to buy an expensive resolution planner that will cost me more every day in time, lost.

What’s important to me and what I value is written on my heart. That’s the guide. That’s the plan to direct my actions and words. Because the fact is, it may be a new year, but there will never be a new and better me. There is just me. In this old house. Both of us—a year older in this new year.

So, unlike years past, I have ventured into the new year with no irritable early morning mind maps. No resolutions or plans to change myself. I just entered the year. I just started doing the things. I have returned to my writing work and creative dreams, refreshed.  

Good health and happy wishes to you all this year, and—  

Onward with the old to brave the new!