What's Better Than a New Do?

Spring is sprouting signs of new life all around us! We’re seeing flowers and shrubs popping open and recently birthed calves wobbling around in now-green fields… welcome sights for our winter-weary eyes! We too might be sporting signs of newness just in time for warmer weather: a different hairstyle or doldrums-defying hair color, a freshly shaven face shorn of its cold-weather beard, flashy new workout wear intended to inspire the shedding of the pounds accumulated during the holidays. There could be an extra bounce in our step reflecting the lightness of our spirit. The extended daylight and warmer temperatures kindle a spark of hopefulness in our hearts. Is there anything better than a new “do” to brighten our outlook on life?

Perhaps we know someone who speaks of “reinventing” themselves over their lifetime. There is a sense in which we all do that as we navigate our way through the years. We change jobs or careers. We move from one location to another. We gain weight and we lose weight. We make new friends and take up new hobbies. We shift our political affiliation and perhaps run for public office. We dedicate ourselves to a certain cause or organization and we give up on some of it or resign from it all. What’s better than a new “do” we may come to believe is an all-new you peering back at us from the bathroom mirror each morning.

This all-new reinvented person we have become likely arrived with mixed baggage. Grief and joy often partner together to accompany change. Embracing the present as well as reaching out to the future requires that we release our grip on the past. Even when we initiate the reinvention of ourselves, we may find ourselves listing on waves of lingering longing. As William Sloane Coffin wisely observed, “Maybe we’re stalled in our journey because we engage in unproductive nostalgia. We yearn for the good old days, which seem to us better only because we ourselves were better.” Perhaps our gazing in the rearview mirror of our lives prompts a parade of regrets from which we cannot seem to be free. New “do” aside, is it possible to break out of the stranglehold the past has on us if we should feel like its hostage?

It is often said that the only thing that doesn’t change is change. And, yes, it happens on a very regular basis. Sometimes it comes to us from outside of us and sometimes it takes place in the privacy of our own heads and hearts. Perhaps it is life’s way of keeping us on our toes with eyes attuned to newness whenever it arrives and however it graciously pries us loose from the past!