With the New Year nearing, we’re used to feeling like we’re hitting a reset button and starting over brand new. And here come the wishes for this “new cycle” pouring from all the people who care about us.
The older I get, the more I feel detached from these forced “cylces”. I do believe there are cycles in our lives, hell, I have my own personal theory that we live different lives within our one life in our current body. Maybe I’ll write about that some other time, right now I wanted to point out that while there are cycles, they come and close naturally. This is what Karma is in yoga philosophy, like a Spiral we come to live similar experiences in our continuous growth and sometimes we react the same way, and how little they affect us is directly proportional to how much we've learned from it. Until we can accept it from a place where we are no longer reactive. That closes that cycle. Not an arbitrary date.
But I’m not going to stop the good wishes and the Western Calendar from happening. I actually enjoy the opportunity it presents to connect with people and for some of us come out of our shells and say cheesy things that we don’t normally express.
That brings me to the topic of this post. What are good wishes?? Are happiness, success, abundance, rainbows, giltter and sunshine all we should have in our lives? We are used to think that, yes, that would be a pretty good life. But.. would it?
Maybe it would be easier to face life if we were taught from the beginning that perfection isn’t the bright extreme of the scale. We live surrounded by duality; most obvious examples are day and night, silence and noise, life and death, beginnings and ends. THE FORCE!! There is only balance when all of those things are present.
My mom says that when I was 4 years old I got in this strange habit of getting mad at people who would see me when I’d fall. So every time I fell, everyone would just look away and ignore me. Some people see it as pride. Honestly it’s one of my favorite stories about me. I feel like maybe I didn’t need people treating my fall as a failure. I needed to fall to know not to run with untied shoes, or to lift my legs higher when going upstairs, or pay more attention to what I was doing. So don’t feel sorry for me, I’ll get up and try again with more wisdom.
I’m not saying that wishing success is a bad thing. Let’s just remember that success doesn’t come packaged in a cute box with a bow at $4.99. Every experience brings knowledge; every failure a lesson, every heartbreak opens the window to know ourselves better. And there is always that next try that (because of all that we have lived, good and bad) will offer a new experience that will be more balanced, where we'll find a new mixed bag of emotions and we will be able to feel all that!
So here is my wish to you, which is the best thing I can think of:
I wish you growth; to be able to fully experience every feeling, every place, every person, every lesson, all the colors and sounds, goosebumps, dreams and reality. I wish you to taste a variety of new and old flavors, and laugh and cry without restrains. I wish for you the delicious gifts of solitude and reflection; the freedom of being in whatever mood you might be and notice it tingle every inch of your skin until it’s gone. I wish for you to feel content and to enjoy the full experience of being human.
.............Happy New Year..