April. That went in a flash. Not much writing. (Plenty of moving boxes around – even unpacking a few.)
I’m still reading though. Still musing. One of the things that seems to be coming up on a number of blogs – and staying with me – is to do with being intentional, having goals, knowing what you’re aiming for.
Sometimes what we end up with is just more of the same. And life is partly like that: eating, sleeping, cooking, cleaning…add your ‘repeat’ activity here.
What I think I’m taking from these blogs, eBooks and so on, is also the notion of the clean slate. Being intentional is not just about doing the things you have to (maybe better, maybe with a different attitude); nor even about doing all the things piling up on that to do list.
It’s not necessarily about the ‘ought to’s either – whether that is reading the top 100 books of the 20th century, or any other worthy (and dare we say it, socially acceptable) form of self-improvement.
I came across a post recently, where the author looks at 40 approaching (me too, sooner and sooner), and thinks about what that means. Life half over? The best still to come?
I think what I’m taking from that, and the other ideas of being intentional, is that the clean slate is just that. It doesn’t have to be something that others expect – or even that we expect.
It could be: something genuinely new. A break with the past. Or something we have done before, restarted, with any guilt about abandoning it before washed off before we begin.
A clean slate is often to do with being given a fresh start. Where our mistakes are wiped off, as though they were never there. What we put on the slate now is ‘new’: to us, to others who may view it.
I like the invitation to include brand new things. To agree not to beat myself up over reappearing things, but embrace them again, with the expectation of joy that there was before.
I like the freedom not to judge what went before, to rake over the ashes – or the successes. Simply to turn, and see something new – even in the repeat items of my life.
What’s going on the slate? Don’t know yet. For now, I rather like looking at it, still empty, with all the potential, all the expectation, still hovering.
Sylvia Plath wrote this about her child, but I rather like the idea of applying it to other new beginnings:
“Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.’