Gary Brown: Starting our new year with clean slates
It's New Year's Day. Your slate should be clean.
"Start your new year with a clean slate!"
That's the traditional advice for beginning the new year, right? But, what does that mean?
Well, in order to determine the answer to that question I went online to what has become a trusted source of information on day-to-day living. I googled "clean slates" on the internet.
Read more Gary Brown columnsA Christmas full of cookies and Grandma, Rudolph and other reindeer
According to the "idioms" – notice I did not say idiots – page of thefreedictionary.com, "starting with a clean slate" means "to start (something) again with a fresh beginning, especially unencumbered by mistakes or regrets from the past."
So, my advice is that once people clear their heads of whatever happened at those New Year's Eve parties, they should clean their slates. But, first, get a good night's sleep. Headaches and indigestion and embarrassment from whatever was eaten or drunk or done when "ringing in the new year," I assume, are all among the regrets we want to get rid of.
Interestingly, whenever I hear "clean our slates" I always think back to grade school when kids used to have to stay after school to clean the blackboard for the teacher to atone for whatever sins against classroom decorum they had committed during the day. Talking during class, passing notes and drawing pictures instead of doing math problems come to mind.
Post-class punishment, of course, was a literal cleaning of the slate – both the board and the erasers had to be chalk-free before kids could leave – and a figurative cleansing of the soul. Plus, paying the price for misdeeds put them in the past and cleared up a lot of room on pupils' records for them to head to school after the holiday vacation and do more stupid stuff in the new year.
Don't ask me how I know.
Why do we clean a slate?
So, you can see I have some experience in cleaning young people's slates in order to start over.
Slate-cleaning for adults is a whole different story. There can be a lot of stuff to get rid of before we move on.
That's why I went back to the internet and found several slate cleaning sites, including one by Joan Lunden, the journalist and television host, who, according to her website, also is a motivational speaker and successful entrepreneur. She happens to be about my age, so I figured she might have done about the same amount of stupid things during her life. I could learn from her.
"Why not take this opportunity at each New Year, to wipe away everything on our slates from last year?" she asked in a posting on her website a few years ago. "That includes all the unresolved arguments, the slings and the arrows that have come our way, and all the hurt and resentment. Remember, the same fence that shuts others out, shuts you in."
Now, this is good advice. Her website goes on a lot about "creating a healthy lifestyle for a better tomorrow," and I was worried that her suggestions would include cleaning my slate of eating toaster pastries or staying up late to watch old "Seinfeld" episodes, so I kept on looking.
How do we clean a slate?
I did find plenty of slate-cleaning ideas on Pinterest, which some might argue is one of the most profound sources of motivational and self-improvement information available online.
"You have BRAINS in your HEAD.
"You have FEET in your SHOES.
"You can STEER yourself any
"DIRECTION you CHOOSE."
Dr. Seuss said that, according to the Pinterest posting. I'm not sure if, technically, Dr. Seuss was a certified medical expert on the therapeutic benefits of slate cleaning, but it sounded good and it rhymed.
I also found a picture on Pinterest showing how to make a "Perfect New Year's Eve Dessert" out of cupcakes frosted to look like the Roman numerals of an old clock. And I noticed there was a pretty cute picture of a "New Year Fairy Wishing Tree." There also was a meme-like image at the site that said: "Today is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one."
I'm aware that none of that has much to do with our central slate-cleaning theme, at least regarding specific directions on how to properly clean all our slates in a manner that will allow us to move forward in a positive manner.
But, the only really useful information I found elsewhere made a lot of noise about picking up stuff around your house and getting rid of unwanted and unused items because the best way to clean up your slate is to unclutter your surroundings.
That's probably good advice, too, but I don't want to be the one to tell you all to start spring cleaning in the middle of winter.
Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com.
On Twitter: @gbrownREP
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Columnist Gary Brown explores ways to clean a slate for the new year
