A new calendar on a desk or on a wall is a possibility for change. Each January brings new calendars with spaces for new appointments and ideas.
Calendars are a miracle in bringing people together. They unite us and organize us as a collective on a planet. By the calendar, we, on a round globe, are all on the same page, within the same day, occasionally separated by a date line. It is truly magical. By our calendars, we agree to meet, and, if we are on the same page and remember what day it is and what time it is, we do. Within those meetings, if we let them have a little breathing room, new and unimaginable things happen.
Calendars can remind us of what we love. I like wall calendars full of pictures, numbers, and pure white squares, each one ready for soemthing to happen. My mom likes cute animals: kittens and puppies, ducks and geese, chickens and roosters, pigs and horses. She loves them. (I wonder if a calendar with great pictures can take the place of having a pet.) My personal favorite calendars were from Gary Larsson’s Far Side and Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes. For me, nothing since then has matched those sublime little stories within a single picture.
Calendars take us through seasons, both natural and legal. In the New Year, we prepare to organize, even if it’s just to pay taxes. Even if you don’t believe in the power of the Winter Solstice, celebrating New Year’s Eve, or taxes, the New Year brings us from darkness into daylight. It is hard to ignore.
This year, you may simply use your Blackberry or iCal to update To Do lists and appointments. These are very helpful and necessary. But where are the cute cartoons and funny pictures? I do miss them.
I find it helpful and grounding to have that hanging paper on the wall, or that book on the desk.
To keep track of time and change, I also keep an organic calendar of my own, a journal, in which I write every now and then. In addition to my wall calendar, at the end of the year I can look back over these notes and refresh my life meaning before the treat of the next year’s calendar, it’s open possibilities, and pictures to make me smile.
The Wellman Method supports leadership development
