New York Celebrates Good Riddance Day

On December 28th, the residents of New York were encouraged to take part in the second annual Good Riddance Day event in which they were able to throw bad memories of the previous year into an industrial sized shredder.

In an event that organizers hope will become a New Year’s tradition, New Yorkers and tourists were invited to bring bad memories from 2008 to Times Square on Sunday and feed them to an industrial-strength shredder.

“This is the perfect way to move on from a bad year, from a bad experience,” said Kathryn Bonn, of New York City, who shredded a printout of her boyfriend’s e-mail breaking up with her.

This is the second year the Times Square Alliance has sponsored the event which they hope will become an annual tradition. I hope it does too. In fact I hope it become a national event.

Every year we make resolutions to be better people. It is a well known fact, though, that by February many of us will have forgotten about our resolutions and another year will go by with us having failed to achieve our goal.

A lot of times our inability to move forward into the future is because we are still hanging on to things from our past. It’s like that story of the university professor who went to visit a famous Zen master. While having tea they talked about the practice of Zen. The Zen master poured tea into the professors cup and didn’t stop even when it was overflowing. Finally, the professor exclaimed, “That’s enough. No more will go in.” To which the Zen master replied, “Equally, you are like this cup of tea. How can I teach you anything more until you empty yourself?”

If you find yourself making the same New Year’s Resolutions you have made the past ten years but failed to achieve, chances are you need to take some time to empty your cup. This means taking a good look around and getting rid of the things that are holding you back. These things could be anything; People, memories and even just plain old crazy ideas.

For example, for the longest time I couldn’t settle on what I wanted to do with my life. I floated from job to job. I would research different industries. I would settle on one thing but then a few months later I would change my mind. Finally, through my journaling, I figured out what was holding me back from moving forward with my plans. I wanted to be successful in life but I was pursuing other people’s ideas of success rather than my own.

To me, success means being able to do what makes you happy. I would be perfectly content with writing fiction stories for the rest of my life even if it didn’t make me any money. But the prevailing idea these days is that success means copious amounts of wealth. So that’s what I pursued. But what I was doing didn’t make me happy and so I never put the effort in required to make lots of money from it. As a result I didn’t get any where.

So in order to move forward, I had to get rid of the idea that I had to pursue other people’s idea of success and instead define success for myself. Sure I’m taking the chance that I might end up on the street panhandling for that night’s dinner but as long as I’m able to write, I’ll be perfectly happy.

Today, take a moment to participate in the spirit of Good Riddance Day. Get rid of those things that will prevent you from moving forward to a better life in 2009. Shred it, burn it, bury it in the backyard. Do whatever it takes to free yourself from the past so you can have a successful future. Happy New Year!

Thank the editor. Buy me a coffee!

Comments are closed.