from Jamie's post

Today’s Wishcasting Wednesday question from Jamie Ridler is: “What is your wish for the New Year?”

I am spending this week doing my own “Review, Reflect, and Resolve,” cobbling together pieces and parts of various annual review and resolutions strategies, worksheets, and practices from around the web. I am adding pages to the front and back of my new 2012 Weekly Planner to formally record the process, and to have something I can keep with me throughout next year, as a reminder and an inspiration. There are lots of personal wishes there, just for me and my life, made solid by the mindful and measured way I’ve put them together, and through my resolve. So my wish for the New Year isn’t a personal one, although it is for me as well.

This New Year, I wish for all of us a letting go and leaving behind of the habits, emotions, expectations, fear, self-hate, stories, grudges, hurts, attachments, addictions, misery, grief, suffering, thoughts, memories, and even the hopes that no longer serve us. We will let them know that they are not invited into 2012.

We will release them and be free.

Picture by Erik Sagen

This is my wish for the New Year, for freedom and a fresh start, for all of us.

P.S. Right after I published this post, I checked my email and there was this image from gapingvoid.com. The artist, Hugh MacLeod (one of my favorites), explains that “So much human suffering is tied to hanging on to things; material, emotional, or otherwise…If you’re unhappy, nine times out of ten it’s because you’re clinging onto something…Nine times out of ten, happiness and letting go are synonymous.” So, I suppose that means the secret wish under the wish is for our shared happiness in the New Year.

art by Hugh MacLeod