Even before the confetti was swept up from Time’s Square, there were signs that the misfortune of 2014 would be sticking around for a while.
Black ice and car crashes.
Hungry cats and fur ball treats…with laxative effects.
No New Year Kiss.
So I went to yoga, trying to start the year off right, look or at least trying to retain bladder control during downward dog. That’s when the hip young yogi instructor shared something personal with the class that her LuluLemons did not.
“Yogis, even though you can do your best, you don’t always have to. Your downward dogs can play dead. Your lotus positions can look wilted. Your warrior positions can go AWOL. But that’s OK. Because sometimes, doing just OK is OK”.
“Thanks a lot, Miss Enlightenment,” was my first response. But after a few twists, I knew she was right.
Sometimes just OK is OK.
Which is why I declare 2015 the Year of OK or Mamahuhu.
Mamahuhu is a Chinese expression that describe things that are just OK, or almost OK, like airline food, network TV, or Renee Zellwegar’s new face.
I declare 2015 the Year of Mamahuhu because it will be at best, just OK. It will mostly likely include more funerals than weddings, more bad lab results than good, more dinner conversations about body functions I never used to think twice about, and having to think twice about things I used to only think once about.
(Really, how many of us in our twenties would discuss where to buy a toilet seat ring or adult diapers for aging parents? )
2015 will include legal fees and interventions, bedbugs, and scary confrontations with panhandlers, meltdowns and therapy sessions, a colonoscopy and one other evasive procedure, late charges and travel delays, multiple revisions and rejection letters from publishers and health insurance agencies, and the most dreaded activity of all: cleaning out the storage unit.
Mamahuhu literally means horse horse tiger tiger, which is a lot better than the upcoming year of the Sheep. Chinese have ever planned their pregnancies to avoid giving birth in this unlucky Chinese Zodiac year. Those born in the year of the sheep are predicted to be followers ,not leaders.
So here’s to Horse horse. Tiger tiger. A year of OK.
Sometimes that’s as good as it gets.