“Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge.”

~ Lord Byron

Life is always on the brink, always becoming, forever tumbling into everything next.

Of course, this isn’t any more true at the new year than it is at other times. But I can’t help being especially aware of it as I hang up my 2025 calendar. A brand new year in which a whole lot of stuff is going to happen. I wonder what it’s gonna be like!

There’s a lot of energy in anticipation.

Sometimes anticipation is exciting — I see a future ready to be experienced, rich in fresh opportunities. I can get super jazzed making plans and setting intentions as I imagine everything that might be possible, the new world of possibility that we might discover and create together.

At the same time, it induces anxiety. Opportunities spell change, which is daunting. And the truth is, while I love transformation in theory, the reality of it usually is danged uncomfortable. All my plans and intentions are going to require commitment, growth, difficult decisions, and maybe some sacrifice. While a world of possibility may include my heart’s every desire, it also promises unforeseeable variables and scary unknowns. A world of possibility includes the possibility of shit that I’m not going to like.

It’s going to be a mixed bag, 2025. I try to be ever-hopeful, and I’m definitely not meaning to inject undue negativity into it. But I’ve been around the block enough to be pretty sure that Life is going to offer up a variety of conditions, both good and not-so-good. On some fronts, it’ll be better than we dared hope, and on others it’ll be utterly nuts. We’ll be presented with many of the challenges and the blessings that we’re expecting, as well as others of which we’ve not yet dreamed. We’ll be reasonably prepared for some, blindsided by others.

And at each step, we’re going to face a brand new world of possibility. When something beautiful happens, the future will wide open, unknown, and unwritten. When something crappy happens, the future will be wide open, unknown, and unwritten.

Our choice, all along the way, is: who are we going to be in it?

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The picture above — a rock on a string about to swing over a host of upright matches placed perfectly to be struck — is from a series called, “In Anxious Anticipation.”

The creators, photographer Aaron Tilley and set designer Kyle Bean, were tasked with making images to evoke a sense of thrilling tension. Some of the other photos in the collection include: a spotless and starched white shirt underneath a fountain pen with a glob of black ink at its tip • a bowling ball about to slide over a sheet of bubblewrap • eggs rolling down a ramp, one in midair, over a marble slab • a ballon hovering above a bed of nails.

I think they’re really effective. There’s a thrill in being on the verge, knowing that something’s about to happen — whether or not it’s something we want. I find myself on one hand eager to push ahead into the aftermath — to break the eggs, stain the shirt, light the matches, pop the bubblewrap, and be done with it. At the same time, I wish I could stop it — if only I could jump into the photo and avert the inevitable…

But with these images, we’re suspended in anticipation, forever on edge, on the brink. It seems like a good metaphor for the reality of our human condition.

We think we know what’s coming, and we steel ourselves to act accordingly. We muster practiced strategies to make things go our way as much as we can. We prepare to cope when we fear things are going sideways.

But in this world of infinite variety and complexity, the truth is: none of us really knows very much about the future.

And I’m wondering: to what degree does the way I’m relating to life right now, on the brink, determine what I’m actually on the brink of? How much does my being in the present inform the unfolding future? How creative is my energized anticipation?

Frozen in time with these images, I can see now that they are more ambiguous than they first appeared. That balloon — is it rising or falling? The matches — will it be a good thing or a bad thing when they’re lit?

Also, I don’t know what’s outside the frame of these photos; I don’t have all the information.  At first glance I was pretty sure that I knew what was about to happen, and I had all sorts of opinions about it.   Such a crying shame that the egg is, inevitably, going to smash.  But, in truth, for all I know there’s someone standing close to catch it.  Or maybe there’s an important reason for it to fall, and we’ll all be glad for it after the fact.

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I don’t know. A friend once told me that not-knowing is a very high vibrational state. That’s fortunate because there’s a whole lot that I don’t know. Most of it, I don’t know. Even the things I think I know, I probably don’t really know.

And still, always, I can choose.

Each of us can choose to be however we want to be right now. On the brink of an unknown future, facing an unwritten world with a brand new year, we can choose to be Hopeful, Kind, Loving — come what may. And I do believe that this choice, right now, will end up shaping everything to come.

Happy New Year, loved ones. I can’t wait to be with you this Sunday, January 5, 2025. With the divine Patty Stephens at 10am, at q-Staff Theatre, 400 Broadway Blvd SE. XO, Drew

©2025 Drew Groves