New year’s… it’s a time for resolutions… goals… all the things we want to do which is really just an optimistic way of thinking about all the things we didn’t do in the last year. I’m usually a fan of the resolution but this year I just decided that maybe instead of thinking about all the things I didn’t do last year and how I failed and setting some goal based on those things… that maybe what I would do is just be grateful…. Grateful for a year that taught me great things.
I have been going through each month in the last week, looking at pics, trying to remember significant events and what I was up to. Some of those memories made me laugh and some of them made me cry but the one thing they all had in common was how grateful I was for them. I felt more this year than I have in any other year and 2011 made me realize what a numb life I had been living out of some sort of desire to protect myself.
I used to dissolve myself in the land of books… a place where it was safe to feel in a disattached kind of way. Getting emotionally involved with fictional characters is far safer than delving into the messy lives of real ones. But this year I have put my books down and have gotten to know the people around me….to really try to see them, not for who they could be, or who I knew them to be… but for who they are right in that moment, and it has been eye opening and wonderful.
I have discovered outlets of creativity I didn’t know I had…. Wrote an entire book, began painting for the first time, made jewelry, and t shirts and cards and even began to love to cook. And I cannot help but wonder if this surge of creativity is not directly connected to this new world of feelings.
2011 taught me to redefine family… that I am not the patron saint of assholes, that people can still fool me, that intention are like boomerangs and when you have impure evil ones even if you are smiling they are uncovered and they bite and if they are pure and true.. eventually they are discovered and valued.
I also realized one of the most powerful aspects of love I never knew before …. And that is love is an independent feeling. It does not rely or grow or exist because of another and it does not dissolve just because you stop feeding it. It is powerful and healing and if you surrender to the love and just recognize the pain instead of surrendering to the pain and just recognizing the love…. It will transform you. It is brave and courageous and it empowers me to know how deeply my ability is to experience it and how unconditionally it lives inside of me… and in a strange way all of that has made me realize and taste and experience another dimension of what God means when he says I am his beloved and his desire is for me.
I am a different person today than I was January 1st 2011….very different….and in some ways people may judge that to be good and in some ways they may judge it to be bad…I don’t really think it is either… it just is. And I am grateful for this year… so grateful down to my core at how well I was taken care of emotionally and physically and spiritually. What a gift my life has been these last 365 days. I feel alive… I feel on fire….I feel strong and sure and solid…. And none of that could come from anything other than what this year has forged in me.
My resolution for 2012? Is to experience it that’s all….every day.. to soak it in…. and draw on the love I have been given… and share the love inside of me….to not make excuses or try to find reason… to live that is all.
To revel in the days of a glorious sunset…. And to revel in the days I want to stick my head in the sand and hide…
To love in a way that is true to my heart and no one else’s definitions or desires.
To follow my own compass even if it means getting lost and wandering in unfamiliar territory.
I don’t know who I will be at the end of this year and for the first time in a long time I don’t really care because I really am enjoying this Rebecca right here in this moment and all that is happening to her.
I don’t have it all figured out and I hope I never do
I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up
I don’t know what great thing I was put on this earth to do
All I know is that love brings all the good back to you… and that pain is so fleeting….and that people are beautiful if you really see past all their outside words and walls and image…
I know I have a voice and when I listen to it and I am true to it the best things in life come from that
I know I am loved…. In a way I never knew before by the divine and by the not so divine and both make me better.
And I know what I want
Hans Christian Anderson wrote some of the most amazing fairytales we know, they have lasted for years and we pass them along from generation to generation. His stories are what little girls dreams are made of…. They are what my dreams were made of at one time.
But I think he knew something we didn’t….he said “Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale”
Each year there is a phrase which follows me…. Last year’s was Bob Marley that got me through those 365 days… his constant reassurance that “every little thing’s gonna be alright”.
But as I begin this new year this Hans Christian Anderso’s is the quote which is ringing in my ears replacing those reggae words.
2011 was a gift
But what I know is 2012 will be also, how can it not? It contains 365 opportunities for my Once upon a time.
0 comments:
Post a Comment