One of my favorite journal entries was one in which I imagined an old-fashioned, indeed, probably mythical, apothecary, filled with dusty wooden shelves which were in turn crammed with even dustier pottery jars:
Imagine a tiny apothecary, dark and dim, crammed with row after row of misshapen pottery jars, discolored corks jammed in their tops, most of them dusty, some smudged from being handled. You walk down the rows, picking up first one, then another, pondering how best to spend your limited funds, while the stooped proprietor shuffles along behind you to be sure you don't slip one of the jars--"Prosperity," perhaps, or "Justice"--in your pocket. A shaft of weak sunlight full of dust motes angles down from a high, smeared window, and illuminates exactly what you've been looking for all your life . . .
The jars contain such things as Enough Time, Daydreams, Healing Laughter, Starry Nights. Sweet Dreams. Good Ideas. And some things that aren't quite as coveted, things that we may have shoved to the back of the shelf, out of sight, but not quite out of mind: Cherished Illusions, Good Intentions, Misplaced Loyalty, Unrealized Potential . . .
The apothecary is, of course, my mind. Or perhaps my heart. All of those things reside there, and all of them are available to take off the shelf, dust off, and examine. Some of them are handled all the time, and their jars remain clean and shiny--Unconditional Love; True Friendship; Happy Memories. Some are there on the highest shelf, not yet reachable, waiting for me to drag the stepladder out of the basement--Complete Satisfaction. Unqualified Success. Unimaginable Wealth. And some seem to work themselves to the front of the shelf time after time, no matter how often and how hard I shove them back--Self Doubt, Pointless Worry, the aforementioned Unrealized Potential. Some of the jars keep getting pulled out by other people and handed to me, whether I want them or not. Stifled Creativity. Blame. Disinterest.
And some jars are gifts, handed to me or placed on the shelf by others. These jars are the most precious, the most fragile--the ones I hesitate to touch lest they break, and sometimes find hard to accept: Encouragement; Support; Faith. Reassurance.
Lately I've been examining my life a little closer than usual. Trying to figure out what I want, what I'm capable of. The New Year is an ideal time to do that. It's an arbitratrary date, of course, but it's a day full of promise, of possibilities, portents. We stay up to greet the New Year with toasts and kisses, fireworks and heartfelt wishes of "Happy New Year." We mean it every time, but each year seems, more and more, to resemble the last. We make lists of resolutions, the same ones every year, and fail to keep even one, or even to make a token effort. It seems pointless to make another list of things that we want to accomplish when we have no real intention of fulfilling them. Just another way to add more Unresolved Guilt to our lives.
So I'm not going to make a list of pointless resolutions. What I do resolve to do, though, is to be sure that the good things in my life—friendship, encouragement, love—-remain there on the easily-reachable shelves, where I can admire them and keep them safe, and to keep shoving the less desirables ones back to the back where they belong—the guilt, the worry, the self-doubt. I resolve to figure out what I want to do with my life, and do it. A big resolution, the biggest. But one that I intend to keep, for a change.
. . . when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.
~ A. A. Milne, "The House at Pooh Corner"
Copyright © 1998 Willa G. Cline