There is this thing going around Facebook, where people are prompting each other to list three positive things about the year just passed. I am surprised at the number of people saying things like, "I'm so happy to turn the page on this year," or opining (see there?) in generally negative terms about 2013, on a personal and/or global level. At the same time, most are able to generate a substantial list of positives.
So, I'm picturing the hoary Taoist icon depicting Yin and Yang--the one I've always found profound, compelling, and insightful into the Nature of All Things. Each year brings its good and bad, and the further we step back (and, the more years we add) the more things tend to balance out. You can apply the Law of Large Numbers, or the idea of Regression Towards the Mean (yeah, I'm reviewing Statistics as a gear up for my dissertation). In the end it is down, of course to our choice of focus. I like trying to focus on the positive (honestly that is easier said than done), while acknowledging that without the negative, the positive would be undefined and unrecognizable. Or suspend value judgments altogether and acknowledge that it is ALL glorious, this wonderful, incomprehensible miracle that comprises our very existence. With all its nuances. All that being said...I'll play:
1) I have reached the halfway point of my doctoral program. While a two week break between classes (the first such since last Christmas, I think--when it was only one week long) has made me realize just how hard I have been pushing myself, balancing a challenging, long-hours job, a family that wants, needs, and deserves my attention, and a graduate program that demands a lot of thought, reading (you know, high-density, academic reading) and writing, and 20 or more hours each week. While taking energy, it has also granted some. And I have my eye on the prize. Anyway, the experience has been a central defining positive, on the whole, of 2013 for me.
2) Arlee and I marked 20 years of married bliss. OK, not all bliss. Refer back to the diagram. Strife, contention, frustration, joy, adventure, and bliss. But, together and in love, still. So, I'm counting it, and her, and in fact the family we have made together, as a central defining blessing, this year, and really every year.
3) I've been privileged to live, travel, adventure and just work and play day to day (such that I have time--refer back above) in Europe, with all the cultural and historic richness that I have come to take for granted. And, I've given that give, for when they later look back and appreciate it, to my boys as well. In 2013 I've ranged from The Hague, to Brugge, to Southern Oregon, to Phoenix, to Paris, and of course all around our local environs here in the Eifel region of Germany. And that was a quiet travel year out of the last several. I am lucky, our family is lucky, to be in a situation, geographical and financial, that lets explore so broadly and drink so deeply at the well that is the world.
Now, we've had some tough challenges, too. And hard lessons, and lessons left unlearned. But, as David Steindel-Rast sagely posited in his recent TED talk, focusing on gratitude is not only right and enlightened, but it is THE key to happiness.
So, I'm going to be grateful for a wonderful year, and I hope you will find a way to do the same. Now, bring on 2014!
