Off The Grid

"New Year, New You?"
There Should Be Nothing Wrong with the "Old You," so Celebrate Every Day

Dr. Phil Maffetone

Each New Year starts the same for most Americans. Or rather it starts hours or days before the Times Square ball drops and the crowd goes berserk for reasons that I never can quite understand. There's the collective sense, even for those not in New York City or watching the celebration at home on television, that the coming new year will be better than the current one: you will be happier, richer, slimmer, healthier, less anxious, and so on. Such expectations, promises, and hopes often fade away even before the first week of January snaps shut.

Here's how Coralee and I celebrated New Year's Eve. We saw no reason to "ring in the new year," because we both feel that each and every day should be a cause for quiet celebration.

We began the evening with a long slow quiet candlelight dinner at home in front of the fire. The main course was organic grass-fed sirloin with a Béarnaise sauce with lightly steamed broccoli. A 2005 Bordeaux complemented it quite well. A bit later, another course—a small slice of raw aged homemade blue cheese with fresh made butter, attracting the Bordeaux even more. And eventually, a warm-out-of-the-oven chocolate cheesecake—all healthy ingredients made from scratch.

We didn’t have to wait for this particular evening for such a fine dining experience. In fact, we celebrate everyday with gastronomical delicacies that are delicious and healthy.

If everyday is special, what can one do to make a particular occasion even more special? I’m not sure. One answer, however, is to just savor and enjoy each day.

Too many people needlessly delay their day-to-day celebrations. Too often, the focus is on the future and not fully living in the present: building upon the nest egg and planning for retirement. This kind of postponement comes at a cost, even if one doesn't recognize it as such.

We have just so many days on this planet. Our finite time here can’t be accumulated like sick-days or vacation days. I remember a patient I’ll call Arnold. He was 49, overweight, and worked for the city of New York. But his dream was to some day follow his untried passion of oil painting. He claimed that it was not possible to paint at the present, nor did he have the time to eat right or exercise. There was too much to do at work. Painting would have to wait for when he retired. But Arnold’s future came with an unexpected bang—a blood vessel in his brain broke, paralyzing much of the right side of his body. The ICU in the hospital kept him alive for weeks. Arnold was helpless and on life support. His family watched and prayed for his recovery. He finally passed without ever once putting a single brush stroke on a canvas.

Yes, there's that Latin saying—carpe diem. Seize or capture the day. Make each day a celebration of being and feeling alive.

Before Coralee and I sat down for dinner on that last December night of 2010, I lit the homemade beeswax candle. I glanced more carefully at the matchbox. It was from Cinecita, a restaurant in Toulouse, in southern France. We had been there three years earlier. Its raw cheeses are exquisite. In particular, the butter and blue cheese combo is a tradition and a delicacy.

That Cinecita matchbox was part of my own matchbox collection that started in 1967 with a class trip to the Montreal Expo World’s Fair. Somewhere I saw an attractive little box with wooden matches and carefully slipped it into my pocket. I thought I was stealing it. But soon I would realize many hotels, restaurants and other places had matchmakers create an artful array of matchstick holders for guests to take home and remember their time of celebration. So I did just that. I started collecting matchboxes and matchbooks, all cleverly designed items for holding these little fire starters. Three decades after my Montreal school trip, and as the result of a busy lecture schedule and traveling with many athletes as their coach, I now had hundreds of matchbooks and matchboxes from all over the world— Europe, South and Central America, Japan, Australia, and dozens of states. My collection grew larger as I kept all of these small treasures without tarnishing any of them—I wouldn’t dare think of striking a single match.

Then one day, I felt something was not quite right. Was I saving these matchboxes and matchbooks for some particular occasion? Was I planning on leaving them to my children or grandchildren? The realization then finally hit me: I could get the joy of striking each match and still maintain the memory with an empty box. I distributed them around the house next to each unlit candle. No more "strike anywhere" matches made in China would light these candles. Instead, each would be lit by a treasured match that originated from a pleasant memory. In many ways, I was keeping that memory alive when the flame came alive from the match and joined the candle's wick.

Coralee and I finished our Bordeaux and she gently blew out the candle. On the stereo, the Rachmaninov piano concertos were ending. It was sometime near midnight and the southern Arizona desert was quiet and dark. Our day's celebration was coming to a pleasing and satisfying close.


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