Timeless Life Lessons
New Year’s reflections from the archive in my mind
It’s been a few years since I’ve made any New Year’s resolutions, even before Covid.
I’m not really sure why I stopped making them, to be honest. I have a vague recollection that one of my resolutions was to stop making resolutions, but I can’t remember if that was a private joke I made to myself or something that I declared publicly for accountability reasons.
Either scenario sounds plausible.
All that aside, I’ve never really liked making resolutions. Who I am changes day-to-day and resolve itself is a forever-changing thing; sometimes it grounds me and other times it haunts me. Making resolutions for myself always seemed to lend itself to toxicity, but maybe that’s because I watched myself and so many others around me lose their conviction to change an area in their life that they were unhappy with very quickly.
The choice to change your behavior is a very personal one and I’ve often found that it takes several tries to truly come out on the other side and be who you always imagined you could be.
I’m not sure that I’ll ever make a New Year’s resolution again.
I discovered a long time ago that I much prefer reflections to resolutions.
10 Things I Learned in 2013:
1. When your life is going bad, the worst happens, and then it’s over. 2. Only you can know what is best for you. 3. It’s okay to take a break. 4. Happiness is a choice. 5. Some people are worth it, some people are not. 6. Don’t be afraid of your emotions. 7. You cannot know what you will do in a situation unless you are the one in it. 8. If people judge you, it’s not your problem. 9. Some things you cannot change; you can, however, control how you react to them. 10. Accept people as they are and don’t try to change them, it will only cause you grief.
A year later, I felt the need to follow up with more of my reflections:
Last year, in place of making a resolution, I decided to focus on the things that I had changed instead of the things I had not. It allowed me to reflect on the impact of the past year, which I found to be far more fulfilling.
So without further ado, here are 10 Things I Learned in 2014:
1. Even if everything isn’t perfect, somehow it all still turns out okay. 2. Bravery comes in many forms. 3. When you take care of yourself first, you put yourself in a better position to help others. 4. Being an adult is hard. 5. Sometimes the conversations we don’t want to have are exactly the conversations that we should have. 6. You can make friends in unlikely places. 7. You’ve got to be vulnerable to achieve any degree of intimacy. 8. Working on yourself is a process; sometimes there is no end goal. 9. You have your priorities. They don’t need to be justified to anyone but yourself. 10. Who you are is not defined by what you do. What you do is defined by who you are.
Here’s the thing:
Context is everything, and the person I was back then is definitely not the person I am now. Although, maybe in some ways, I still am, and that’s totally okay.
But I’d like to think that growth means that parts of ourselves have to die so that we can truly blossom.
A bittersweet reality: that’s life, right?
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