Looking Back and Looking Forward

The past year has been pretty hard, and I am counting maybe the past two years in this, because they kind of blend together. Maybe, I am even counting everything from March of 2020 as a year, because it has felt like one long, hard season where I have dragged myself from one thing to the next, like everyone else has too. Maybe that’s what pandemics do to people, make us not be able to sense time, because events just slide painfully from one into the other.

Even if something amazing happened in the past three years, for me, those beautiful things have been hidden by the drudgery of every day life, or by the bigger more prevalent things that have just been pain and suffering. But still I am grateful. Because all of these experiences make up who I am today.

Through all of the difficulties since 2020, I have learned a lot about who I am and who I want to be.

And, I have learned a lot about who I am, and who I don’t want to be.

Who I want to be moving into the second half of my life is a kinder person, a more easy going person, a person who I would want to be around. Since I live by myself, I get to spend a lot of time with myself, and sometimes I think that I would not want to spend much time with myself if I didn’t have to because I live within my body and I can’t avoid it. I have some goals for this year, which I have already enumerated, but I also have a guiding question for me for this year: would I want to be friends with me?

I don’t want to be the type of person who I would answer no to that question. I don’t want to spend the second half of my life being afraid that I won’t succeed, being paralyzed by the caparison game, worrying about whether or not I have what everyone else has or can do what everyone else can do, or trying to please people who will never be pleased no matter what I do. I’ve said it here before that I just want to live a life that makes me proud of who I am and what I can uniquely offer to this world.

I want to make choices that benefit as many people as possible. I want to see the good in the people around me. I want to trust people, even when they disappoint me. I want to jump in to help. I want to see the light where there isn’t much light. I want to be a hope bringer.

So, here’s to living love, peace, joy, and here’s to trying to bring light into this dark, dark world.