Wednesday, January 1, 2020

My New Year's Wish


With a changing of the yearly calendar, this is the time when expressions of “Happy New Year” and “Best Wishes for the New Year” abound. For many, it is also an opportunity for a time of reflection on events past, an assessment of time present, and determination of directions to pursue in the forthcoming year. In that spirit of reflection, assessment, and determination, I offer some ideas that may be appropriate for your consideration.

My New Year’s wish is that we reflect upon our myriad ancestors and their stories, some known to us yet most unknown, whose widely varied lives made our lives possible in this time, place, and setting – we are because they were.

My New Year’s wish is that we strive to see our parents simply as the non-idealized adults that they are/were, with their own everyday struggles reflecting their own life experiences, that we may see them through the adult eyes of our present rather than the childhood eyes of our past, a key to living in the present not the past.

My New Year’s wish is that we thank our extended family for the lessons and experiences of our childhood, some magical, some difficult, that brought us to the threshold of our adulthood and sent us on the path we have subsequently chosen to live.

My New Year’s wish is that we prioritize time for our immediate family, for the love and presence that they give us as we struggle to hold them close, yet free them to live and fulfill their own destinies.

My New Year’s wish is that we remember our many friends encountered over the years, some but for a moment in time, others still traveling with us on our journey, some more honest or dependable than others, but all serving to enrich the life that we are living.

My New Year’s wish is that we recall the many teachers that have helped to guide our lives, some in formal teaching roles and others simply by their presence in our lives, some teaching from their knowledge, some inspiring by their example, all providing a foundation upon which we seek to build a “next generation.”

My New Year’s wish is that we acknowledge and respect the many mentors who have reached out to us, and opened opportunities and smoothed our way, whether intentionally or by happenstance, without whom our life would have meandered in wholly different directions with far different results.

My New Year’s wish is that we come to embrace the challenges and regrets that have occurred on our journey, some smaller bumps in the road, others extraordinarily difficult to pass through, many of which resulted in positive outcomes only seen well after the moment.

My New Year’s wish is that we learn to live comfortably with persons seemingly not like ourselves, to have respectful conversations of differing opinions, and to no longer see each other as different but as diverse reflections of the vast creative breadth of God’s Universe.

My New Year’s wish is that we allow ourselves to have big dreams, the confidence to strive for them, the ability to ignore the many naysayers, and the courage to manifest them into our own unbridled joy.

My New Year’s wish is that, as a result of this time of reflection, assessment, and determination, we reconnect with our true inner self, the self that transcends our daily life and our many roles, thereby infusing the spirituality of our being within all that we do and to all whom we encounter.

©   2020   Randy Bell                         https://OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com