Well, I can't say I'm sad that 2013 is over. What a difficult year. My husband and I both, on separate occasions, contracted unrelated, life threatening infections. It took him a year to recover. Mine was less serious, although it caused part of my face to blow up like a balloon. Two trips to the ER and one scar later, I was fine. I don't even mind that scar so much...it's on my chin and now I can become a pirate.
This year was difficult in so many other ways. Family moved away, lost jobs, found jobs. Friends left, suddenly and unexpectedly and painfully. Relationships changed. It was a year of goodbyes and a year of pain and a year of a lot of uncertainty. So of course, I welcomed the new year with open arms.
The thing I like most about the New Year is that it's full of possibility. I have so many plans for this year that I get excited just thinking about it. I have two semesters of college to think about and look forward to, and a lot of other things in the works.
The other thing about plans is that you can make them all you want to, but there is never any certainty that they will work out or that things will go the way you want. Probably one of the most difficult lessons I learned in 2013 was that I cannot control everything. It's a no-brainer. No one can control everything. Even in life-in your own, personal life-there are variables that are outside of your reach. Things, or probably more accurately, people, will pull the rug out from under you, drop you on your ass and leave your head spinning. Things that you never in a million years thought would happen, will happen. And then you can waste a whole lot of time crying and worrying over what happened, and why did you make a/b/c decision that led to that particular scenario, and you can spend hours pulling it apart, wondering what went wrong and what you could have done differently. You can try, until you are exhausted physically and emotionally, to succeed at something, fix something, apologize for something, and still, the best you can do may not be good enough in the end. And I'm here to tell you:
Let it go.
I spent the better part of 2013 making these mistakes: looking at different situations, blaming myself for things outside of my control, apologizing for things that I had no business apologizing for. And you know what? It was a huge waste of time! It was a waste of time because a) I wasn't the only person involved in a/b/c scenarios b) I couldn't go backwards and undo whatever I did, or re-do things that I thought weren't good enough, so why worry about it now? and c)some situations really are outside of your control, like serious illness or the choices that someone else makes.
This year, your time can be best spent caring for and loving the people who honest to gosh love you and would never desert you. Your time can be best spent improving yourself, either through learning something new or taking care of yourself. Your time can be best spent creating a level of spirituality for yourself that you haven't reached yet. For whatever that means to you...drawing closer to God, staying on the eightfold path, or simply creating peace in your life where none existed before. And your time can be best spent serving others..whether they deserve it or not...this is one of the best ways to learn more about yourself and draw your focus outward instead of inward.
I wish all of my readers a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2014!
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