Thoughts on the New Year
By Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D
Core Faculty Member, Pacifica Graduate Institute

We fall into stories;
They often break us. We arise renewed.
Let a narrative nag at you.
Don’t swat at what irritates.
Let it land on the skin of your soul.
Sigh at the end of the year. Turn your face sunward.
The new year shines back in yellow mystery.
Your year has offered new stories.
They may be only half told.
The New Year writes old stories anew.
Sometimes my story is a tattered rag.
It calls to be mended. I can only amend it.
Last year the sun set every evening in the West.
But the New Year feels miraculous.
I will seek the setting sun in the East.

And we have landed onto the backs of a goat.  Welcome to the dawn of Aquarius and the rising power of the public opinion. We enter the Chinese year of the Sheep. We are being told that this is also the rise of the Age of Aquarius. Not the anthem of the Woodstock generation but a swell in feminine voices and alternate ideas. And another expanse stretches ahead, welcoming us to more ideas and imagination afloat.

What then, of what we have just experienced? The year that was 2014? Yes, it flashed past us. For those in our fifties and more, time seems to whiz past without a care. My mother was a grandmother at 50 and look at so many of us creative women... watching our children carve out their dreams without even a glimmer of another generation ahead!

2014 seemed to be a year when social media stopped chattering and started screaming. The outpouring of images, quotes, statements, opinions and general barrage flooded our hand helds and laptops. Young things with no credentials assumed global importance with innumerable "LIKES" and comments. Oh, the megalomania or self indulgence! We saw a lot and more of it in 2014. But creativity continued live and people responded. Smaller and smaller audiences gathered for quality work and more and more thronged for shows that had huge publicity and media support. However, one could not FORCE rasikas to STAY for rubbish and many were seen walking out of high profile events after the first 20 minutes.

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