I've seen a few of these New Years come and go in my time, I'm thankful to say. It's no small thing, though it's easy to take for granted. Easy, sure, but to do so is a mistake.
This New Year's Eve was, from the start, a mixed bag of emotions and reflections. My wife and I were struggling to assemble plans up till almost the last minute. We were dealing with how we felt as people in relation to the folks with whom we regularly socialize. Positive thinking was difficult to achieve as we felt despair at the realization of the possibility of the both of us being nothing more than useful to a great many people. Such hollow relationships seemed overwhelming, and their uncertain existences cast a shadow over our outlook for the holiday.
Eventually messages and responses to messages came in and plans began to form. Good friends, the kind you bond with, separate from, and inevitably reunite with after time, extended us an invitation to come spend the holiday with them in their home. That invite was, not to exaggerate too much, one of the most meaningful gestures and it provided one of the most glorious mood shifts I believe that I have ever experienced. Basically, they came through, like good friends always seem to do, in spades. Other friends, not to neglect their wonderfully considerate contributions and attempts to graciously share their time with us, graced us with offers and concerns as well, but timing and other factors prohibited us from being able to make them a part of the holiday, much to our disappointment.
This time around, thanks to the nature of the experience amongst good friends, the holiday has taken on a new meaning for me, and I know that I'm not foolishly or emptily expressing this while riding an emotional high or while being willfully lost in some pleasing delusion. I now have evidence and therefore a fair certainty that it's a time to not only humbly and respectfully end the old year, meaningfully if one can, but to also actively focus on various personal aspects for the sake of the future. By spending such a significant event laughing and conversing with those one cares for, and by freely giving one's self over to the ways of a person who genuinely loves life (life, as in the series of events a person experiences from birth to death and how they experience them) I find that it's possible that they can touch that sacred, internal place in which the beauty of one's humanity takes root and where some believe, perhaps even feel, that the soul resides.
I don't like to declare resolutions for a New Year. That's a tradition that has had little meaning for me, a person who believes in taking things as they come, instead of planning, and doing what one can with what one has at the time. That being stated, I feel that I do have some things to strive towards or maintain throughout this year, 2013, and beyond until I die. I'll state them as hopes, because I must acknowledge and confess to my idiotic habit of forgetting or neglecting things to which I wish to commit (that's a personal issue I'll have to remedy over the long term, I'm afraid).
-I hope that I can make the search for the positive my priority no matter the circumstances.
-I hope that I can maintain contact with the people who matter most, always remember why and how they matter, and let them know in various ways that they mean much to me.
-I also hope that I can better prepare myself for the opportunity to take better control of the vehicle of my life and focus on creating personal, meaningful work with which I can support my wife and our life together.
I hope that everyone, no matter what, will have a good New Year in which all will be able to take better care of each other, put away our petty and destructive tendencies, and begin to create a future which will benefit and honor every single human being. I remain, in spite of my nature, hopeful for this.
Thank you for reading.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this :)
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