New Year Brings Newness

(Written whilst on a new year high, please forgive hyperness)

I sit here in a lovely hotel connected by sky bridges to two other hotels thinking about how I want this year to be better, different and new.

 (crazy eyes)

I never took resolutions seriously for more than a week until I read some of Matthew Kelly's books. Maybe it was because he is Australian and a palpable, even charming type-A that I decided to write down my one year, five year and five+ year goals. Or maybe, maybe because I desperately wanted to be the kind of person who could decide to do something and do it. 

Waking up early will again go on the list. I didn't do that AT ALL. 

But I did take a class outside of work for a whole year and that has never happened ever. Hellsbells I said, I will not be a quitter! And so I went and loved it, even when I sucked (okay I didn't love it when I was awkward, and there was that one time I skipped and went running instead, but it was one time!!!). 

When I wrote my list last year it was at a time when I was very vulnerable and I wanted to believe that I could change. That God could mold me. That my happiness could come out of me changing when I had no control over my environment. Or as Anne of Green Gables so sweetly put it, "It's not what the world hold for you. It's what you bring to it."

And she was right, and it isn't a sugar-coated perspective. There is still sorrow and anguish but there can be peace keeping you steady, or in the worst of circumstances keeping you from drowning!

My dad and I watched a documentary the other day called "Happy". The movie tries to analyze and determine the factors that make a person happy or not. A percentage is made up of our own genetic make up. Some people are just more naturally able to feel the "Happy High". Money also comes in to play, but here's the catch, people who have all of their needs met are found to be just as happy as very very rich people. Then there is what you decide to do about being content. Apparently the choices and habits you make can help rewire your brain to have a higher and higher capacity for happiness. Which I found to be relieving, because that made sense to me since I feel myself functioning differently than even two or three years ago. Last but not least, "Happy" focused on community and how human connections bring joy (of course!) but we sometimes put the people we love on the side for the sake of fame and money. I was glad that they did talk about God nearing the end, and they interviewed a couple of people of deep faith, including a man who gave up his career to work with Mother Teresa and he was just so blissful!

I don't know where I was going with this... I guess what I wanted to say is that change is hard, and you might think that you are a person who can't change, but I say you absolutely can and that resolutions can actually be resolved! 

Sometimes when your life "is a graveyard of buried hopes" it is the kick of God telling you to start A-NEW.