Endings and Beginnings

It is that time of the year where we say goodbye to the old and make new resolutions for the New Year. This past year has certainly been a good year for me. I spent the entire year working my way slowly through my thirty-three list of experiences all the way until the last few days of 2011 where I accomplished something I never thought I’d be able to. I installed ceramic tile on my kitchen wall. This kind of task was the kind of job two years ago I would have hired someone or convinced someone else to do it for me. Two thousand eleven meant many changes though, so I found myself ending my year by grouting tile (translation: making a huge mess that I then had to clean up), and  in this task I also found myself reflecting on what I have learned this year.

The year has had its highlights. My list of experiences, including the tattoo, the psychic, my trip to New York City, and all the great entertainment I experienced this year certainly made the year a memorable one. Every one of my experiences has taught me about myself, whether it has been my strengths or my limitations. When I talked about my experiences with people, they immediately referenced a bucket list. I always referred to it as my divorce list, but why should we wait until we are near death or divorced to do all the things in life that make it truly worth living?

My list, after all, didn’t really ever pertain to my divorce. I always came back to that moment sitting in the police van where it sank completely through my conscious that my life could have and maybe should have ended that day. I have difficulty putting that moment into words even though I deal with words all the time. Not that I couldn’t do it I suppose if I sat and thought about it long enough. How to explain the feeling that I’d experienced knowing that if my life would have ended that moment when the bullet projected upward instead of into me that I would have wasted the time given me. I had put off doing anything worthy of living because I was too busy dwelling on everything that made me unhappy, and someone came along and nearly took any chance I had of changing that away from me.

As any true optimist though, I prefer to view it as an epiphany. A clicking of fate telling me that life is not about waiting around, it is about living in the moments you are given. So living in the moment was the lesson of the year. I’ve learned that happiness is stringing those moments together, and the string of those moments is the story of a person’s life. I enjoyed each of my experiences, most of which taught me that sometimes the only person holding us back is ourselves, whether it is our fears or our inability to change or just by letting day to day life itself get in the way.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I still feel like something is missing though. I feel as though I would not have survived that day if there wasn’t something else I was supposed to do. I suppose it feels as if I’m not supposed to be selfish with a second chance to change things. I’m not saying that I believe I need to change the world now, but I do feel as if I’m supposed to help others in some kind of way.

It’s something that I’ve thought about often, but I don’t know the answer to those questions I ask myself. I do believe I will know it when it comes to me. I learned this year though that nothing in life comes to you if you wait around for it; you must seek out life and pay attention to what it is telling you. So for 2012 I’ve created a list with a theme of discovery, a discovery of purpose. It’s not a year where I will forget the lessons of 2011, but rather a year to deepen my understanding of my journey.