I've really never been a big fan of making New Year's resolutions ... or revolutions as my daughter used to call them when she was a little girl. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for setting goals or getting rid of harmful habits or striving to be a better person. I'm absolutely in favor of participating in some good old-fashioned introspection from time to time. And speaking of introspection, here's an interesting little tidbit for you to mull over ... consider it a freebie for this evening's post or it could be fodder for my beloved head doctor's unending questions as she seeks to dig her way into the recesses of my ever-challenging mind. But back to the tidbit that is perhaps worthy of a certain amount of mulling ... I generally come away from those times of personal reflection and reevaluation even more convinced that resolving to eat healthier foods or exercise harder or devote more time and attention to the people I love and care about shouldn't be made at the beginning of a new year, but rather every single day of my life.
Even if you only check in on your social media accounts once a week, I'd bet you've still seen more posts than you ever wanted to see that were lamenting what a bad year 2016 was ... I know I sure have. I have to agree that 2016 wasn't the greatest year I've ever had, both for me personally and for my extended family as well, but I also have to say that it wasn't the worst one I've ever experienced either. I had a lot of major life changes that took place last year, some good and some not, and sometimes they were a mixture of both good and bad. Take selling my house and moving into an apartment, for example ... there are way too many goods and not goods and mixtures involved in that major life event to even attempt to share with you. But I will tell you this ... I expected it would be that way even before I actually made the decision to put my house on the market. And I'll tell you this, too ... I think the fact that I expected there to be good, not good and a mixture of both helped me get through the process with far less trauma than most people thought I would.
I've been thinking a great deal over the last couple of months about expectations ... about what I expect from myself, what I expect from others and what others expect from me. And in the course of all that thinking, I realized something that I consider to be rather profound. Expectations, whether self-imposed or instituted by another, can serve as a catalyst that spurs me on to tremendous personal growth or they can be a mechanism that delivers defeat and despair. And sometimes ... well ... sometimes they can be, whether self-imposed or instituted by another, a murky mixture of both.
Even though some of you won't agree with me, I'm not going to wish you a happy new year and I don't want you to wish me one either. It's not because I don't want you to be happy and it's most definitely not because I don't want to be happy myself. It's because wishing you to have a year filled with complete happiness is not only an unrealistic wish, it's one that's impossible for anyone to attain. So instead, I wish you a year of the good, the not good and the mixture of both. I wish you a year that grows your heart and expands your compassion for others ... a year that teaches you to value people more than things ... a year that brings you understanding for who and what really and truly matter most in this life.
So here's to the year ahead, friends ... here's to the good, the not good and the mixture of both. Here's to being open, honest, real and transparent. Here's to taking care of each other. Here's to being better people than we were before.
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