Creating a New Year’s Collage with a Message

My New Year’s collage is below. It is titled “Letter from Self.”

Notice the repeated mailing labels “From” and “To.” To deconstruct: the “From” (sender) is me/us. We are in blue. We have good words on our label. All words in blue are good. The “To” (recipient) is mean people. They are in red! They have negative words on their label. Words in red ink describe mean folk. Also: green words are good. Words in black are feelings, both positive and negative.

The collage messages dual directionally. At one level it is a self-reminder to me/us about staying away from those who are not nice. Message from self to self! The collage doubles as a warning to mean people from me/us to stay away as I/We have become unwilling to deal. Message from me/us to mean people.

The collage is a way of signaling my positive 5 word New Years’ message, described in an easier blog post and repeated here:

Surround yourself with good people.

The point is this: Sometimes, we need to be reminded to embrace good people and create boundaries (lines and crumpled paper barriers around red in the collage) so the “bad people” don’t suck the air out of our lives. Life is far too short and far too hard with far too much potential for good to allow negative, selfish, nasty, mean people to drain us (more than necessary) in our private lives. We need to focus on the good and on good people. Look at this collage if and when a reminder is needed.

And here’s that reminder in words to accompany the collaged image: We can and should choose to be with good people whenever and wherever possible; there is/are enough bad (people) without having to walk intentionally toward or into it (them). Letter sent!

Happy New Year; May it be filled with plentiful good (people).