Next Year

December 31, 2011 by 1 Comment

I love New Year’s Eve, but not for the partying and fireworks that mark the end of one year and beginning of a new year. I haven’t really seen a wild, indulgent party on New Year’s Eve since my daughter was born, really. It’s the one night of the year when babysitting help is impossible to find and even loving relatives don’t oblige since they usually have a celebration of some kind to go to. So I’ve usually welcomed another year in the quiet of my home, watching the countdown on television at midnight and to my surprise have at times enjoyed it more than I did the wild partying in my motherless days. But that’s not the reason I love New Year’s Eve.

I love it because it’s a day I use to reflect on the year just past and find that I am grateful for all the experiences, even the crappy ones. The fact that I made it through to 31 December means I’ve survived and yes even thrived through another year. I look back on the laughter, the loving moments with family, the fights with family, the meaningful times with friends, the successes and failures of projects I’ve undertaken and the pure will that has at times gotten me through another day and I realize that there’s so much to be grateful for and so many blessings, both big and small to experience in just one day. When I speak to family and friends as the year comes to a close, most of the conversations start or end with “next year…” which is usually followed by a goal, dream or wish. And in those two words alone is a feeling of hope for something better. The fact that year after year we put out thoughts and desires of what we hope for in the next year, despite the challenges and missed goals of the previous year, fills me with gladness. As long as we have hope, we have possibility to achieve anything. And that’s why I love New Year’s Eve so much. For me it is a day of hope.

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Season for All Things

December 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment

T’is not just the season to be jolly it would seem. There’s something about this time of year that has us all go just a tiny bit batty along with our joyous merrymaking. As the days leading up to Christmas grew shorter, I noticed people’s sanity wearing thinner. Tempers flared in shopping mall parking lots; sighs and eyes rolling in annoyance were the order of many pre-Christmas days and from the conversations I had with friends, it seemed family disagreements were fast becoming the rule rather than the exception. We even had a few testy moments in my own family. In many ways we’ve become caught up in the commercialism of Christmas and lost touch with its true Spirit of love, hope, celebration and joy. Seems like the ‘perfect’ gift and meal has replaced the ‘joy’ this time of year should really be about as we enjoy the company of loved ones. The simplicity of the manger has long been forgotten as we scrimmage around for the high tech, gourmet or trendy. These days we pretty much do Christmas the way we do the rest of our lives – fast, upscale and in some cases competitively. Yet despite the maddening crowd rushing about and the tense moments putting a damper on yuletide cheer, there are those moments on the BIG day when all the angst seems worth it.

I love that moment around the Christmas lunch table when everyone hoots with laughter as we tell jokes and reminisce on past family moments (both the good and bad ones). I love how the more eggnog or Christmas punch we drink, the more relaxed and frivolous we become. And of course I love the one or two second wide-eyed wonder even the scroogiest of the lot exhibits as we unwrap Kris Kingle gifts with full bellies after lunch. Seems to me t’is the season to be all things – grumpy, scroogy, angsty, joyful, childlike, magical and celebratory. Like the infant or toddler about to hop on Santa’s knee for the first time, we don’t really know how it’s going to go until the child is actually sitting on Santa’s knee – some cry, some laugh, many do both. And that’s why for me, it’s still the most wonderful time of the year.

Happy festive season to all around the world.

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Clearing out the old

June 2, 2010 by 1 Comment

Clearing out the old to make way for the new has become a yawn of a cliché, but still holds merit when we’re looking towards a “better” anything – better future, better relationships, better health, better career opportunities. I just wish it wasn’t so challenging sometimes. I’m on a journey yet again to better health and I’ve discovered that breaking and letting go of old patterns is definitely not as easy as the “all it takes is 21 days” promised by most self-help gurus. I have tried 21 days of various health programs and it hasn’t always yielded the results I hoped for. I don’t usually have a problem getting through the 21 days of developing a new habit – I have trouble with maintaining the new habit. Sometimes it feels like those old habits and patterns have stronger roots than I thought and they’ve wound their ugly, gnarled tendrils deep into the soul of my psyche. Maybe it’s just a case of wanting to change too much too soon. I do have some obsessive tendencies and tend to jump into things with gusto and often bite off loads more than I can chew. When I look back over years of embarking on growth and improvement in the various areas of my life, I’ve realized that I usually have greater success in sustaining anything if I take the “savouring tiny morsels” approach. The slower I integrate a new habit into my life and the more time I allow myself to master it, the longer it stays around usually changing from a mere guest to a permanent diner at my table of growth. So my epiphany for today is to take on clearing out the old slowly and consistently rather than trying a gun-ho spring clean – after all a whirlwind of dust often lands back in the same old spots once it settles.

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