Today is Monday, Jan. 2, 2012. We’re here. We made it – some of us against formidable odds – to a new year. But not just any new year; this is the new year of popular western culture, fabled and fantasized about like no other year in recent memory. Not even the famed Y2K, with its computer-failure mythology, really comes close to the anticipation and expectation piled onto 2012.
So, um, now what?
Don’t answer that.
Really – I mean it. Resist the temptation to fill in the blank of what this year will be / must be / can be / ought to be. I’m not saying you shouldn’t set intentions or hold a vision or outline steps toward your goals in life. Rather, in the wake (really, still the midst) of apocalyptic doom saying and great-awakening prophesying about 2012, we might do well to hold the middle ground of a third option. It just happens that third option is to surrender to not knowing.
Accepting that we don’t know can be hard enough with mundane things like whether or not the person we just called to ask on a date will call back. What do we do with bigger mysteries if we don’t busy ourselves creating stories or consuming stories or weighing conflicting theories? Can we hold space for this span of time that has been so over-hyped, without panicking? What do we do if we don’t rush to fill the void in our understanding as a means of staving off fear? It’s true enough that nature abhors a vacuum. But is living with a mystery like “what is 2012” really a vacuum?