Perhaps it’s the first time I’ve felt this! I said to my
wife, again probably for the first time ever, that I thoroughly love this time
of year. This year.
She asked me why. I told her that it seems so peaceful, with
many of the set activities of the year still in recess, with the anticipation
of events and opportunities still unknown, even as I sit in this liminal space.
I think I am so used to that ugly kind of liminal space where
a dream has been dashed, and I’m in a kind of nothing holding pattern, that I’ve
forgotten the glory in a different kind
of liminal space — where hope is pregnant, where joy is apparent, where peace
is affective.
Sure, it might be that the new year holds unforeseen pain,
and indeed, that it could cost us dearly. It might be that you enter New Year languishing
in grief. For all we know the new year could be an annus horribilis. Queen Elizabeth II had one of those years in
1992. Mine was 2016. And I’ve heard so many since, remark about their 2017 or
2018 years as theirs. Once we’ve had one it leaves an indelible mark.
But
thankfully a hard year, even a tough decade,
doesn’t characterise the rest of our lives.
doesn’t characterise the rest of our lives.
What we can say without the shadow of any doubt is this, in
the words of Denzel Washington, that “ease is a greater threat to progress than
hardship.” Whatever the world and our life situations throw at us this year, we
just need to keep throwing our best selves into them. We maintain our goals,
because they are precious to us, and if we keep working, and if we keep
believing, we will achieve success.
Like any year, especially at New Year, there are virginal
opportunities, because our hope has been freshened up a little. The sheen of
our countenance glistens. And if we can bear the quietness of January, and just
be at peace, knowing good things are coming, we may rest content in the most
harmonious period of the year.
It
may well set us up for the rise we’d long hoped for;
perhaps for something far beyond any dream we had.
perhaps for something far beyond any dream we had.
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