Crossing the Rubicon

I don’t know about your house, but here at mine, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  The boys are loving having all the empty boxes around to fight over, hide in, and, inevitably, tear apart.  (I include Monty this time when I say “the boys”).  As always happens, it feels like we just finished off the Thanksgiving leftovers, and now here we are, one week from Christmas and two weeks from New Year’s.  Because it’s still two weeks away, I wanted to write about New Year’s in this post.  If you’re anything like me, you might be a procrastinator when it comes to doing something that sounds as dull as setting goals.

And that can be dull.  It’s hard to sit down in the middle of party season and think about the coming year.  But if we don’t do it now, when?  I want to start 2018 with a blueprint of plans for the year—so I’m starting now to give myself ample time to think about what my hopes, prayers, and dreams are for 2018.  My parents raised us to set goals, especially as each new year came.  We’d talk about what the highlights of the current year were and then discuss what we hoped and prayed for, for the new year.  Mom and Dad are purposeful people—they would never just wake up on January 1^st and jot down a couple of quick goals they might want to try to achieve in the new year.  No—they plan.  They pray.  And when they do wake up on January first, they already have their goals set.  They begin the very first hours of the new year knowing what they’ll be working towards that year.

In the past, I’ve tried many different approaches to setting goals—some have worked, and some haven’t.  The last few years, I followed Mom and Dad’s lead and chose a word to guide my goalsetting.  This past year’s word was “stepping,” and every goal I set was with that in mind.  I wanted to take steps to move myself forward, and I wanted to keep following the oh-so-important twelve steps.  And I did both.  There were also many times that I stepped backwards, stepped off the path I was on, and tried to take too many steps at once.  Still, I was stepping.  And, as one of the main principles in recovery says, life is about progress, not perfection.  But there must be progress: I will be so frustrated with myself if I let another year pass and I have to set the same exact goals next year because I didn’t do anything to bring them to fruition this year.

I’m still going to choose a word for 2018 that will be my guide for goal setting.  That aside, I’m going to try a different approach this year.  And it was inspired by these lines of poetry by Louis MacNeice:
“Tonight we sleep on the banks of the Rubicon—the die is cast.
There will be time to audit the accounts later;
There will be sunlight later,
and the equation will come out at last.”

MacNeice ends his epic work, “Autumn Journal” with these words.  He’s referring to life in Europe on the eve of World War II.  I’ve always loved these last words and the somewhat foreboding tone to them, and I thought they beautifully concluded “Autumn Journal.”  I had a vague notion of what MacNeice was referring to when he mentioned the Rubicon.  But this last year, I really studied “Autumn Journal” and the history that influenced it, and when I got to these final words, I researched everything I could find on the reference to the Rubicon.  I’ll spare you the in-depth study and instead summarize what I learned.

In 49 BC, Julius Caesar’s term as governor of a non-Italian territory came to an end, and the Roman government ordered him to disband his army and return to Rome.  He was told in no uncertain terms that he was prohibited from crossing the Rubicon.  The Rubicon wasn’t a wide or deep river; in places it was more like a creek.  But it was an ancient boundary marker of the most northern point of Rome.  A Roman general was absolutely forbidden to cross the Rubicon with his troops.  To do so was considered to be a declaration of war on Rome and an act of treason that was punishable by death. 

Historians agree that this is the place where Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

However, if Caesar didn’t cross the Rubicon and march into Rome, he would have had to relinquish his troops and go into exile.  Historians believe that Caesar gave the decision a great deal of thought before ultimately deciding to cross.  As Caesar began to lead his troops across the Rubicon, he supposedly said, “alea iacta est,” which means, “The die is cast.”  Caesar knew that his actions were going to have enormous, inevitable consequences—and he knew that there was no turning back.

Since that time, the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” has come to mean passing the point of no return.  Once you’ve crossed the Rubicon, you can’t turn back.  You can’t change your mind.  Your decision is irrevocable.  Irreversible.  The die is cast.  The next move has been decided before the die even lands on the table.

As I think about goal setting and planning and the hopes and dreams I have for myself in 2018, I’m thinking about crossing the Rubicon.  We all are, at least in one way—we’re moving from 2017 to 2018.  When the countdown begins on New Year’s Eve, there’s always that feeling of inevitability.  The year is over.  We can’t go back.  What will you leave behind in 2017—so irrevocably, so irreversibly—that you can’t ever go back to it?  What will you leave on the banks of the Rubicon?  You have two weeks to think about it—to set up camp on that riverbank, stare down into the water, and ask yourself what you’ll leave behind.  Negativity?  Labels that other people have given you that you don’t want to wear anymore?  A friendship or relationship that has become toxic?  A behavior that is damaging your health?

You might have several.  I know I do.  And when I think about where I will be when 2019 begins and I’ve spent a whole year without those things, I feel a burdensome weight roll off my shoulders.  Remember, once you’ve crossed the Rubicon, you can’t go back.  Ever.  You can’t be like one of those confused squirrels in the middle of the road that keeps changing its mind and scampering one way, then the other.  So once you’ve made the decision, figure out a way to make it impossible for you to go back.  You may not have the entire Roman army after you, but you can still make a return impossible.  Burn your bridges.  Tell the people closest to you what you’re doing and ask them to be your accountability team.  If they love you, they’ll do everything they can to keep you from going back.  Make a list of everything you have to lose if you go back, then make copies of that list and put it everywhere.

It’s time to make your choice.  So take a deep breath, cast your die, and cross your Rubicon.  The countdown to 2018 is coming.  10. . . 9. . . 8. . . 7. . . 6. . . 5. . . 4. . . 3. . . 2. . . 1.