In the spirit of ringing in the new year, let’s talk about beginnings.
First, a cliche: for every beginning, there is an ending. I have been thinking a lot in the context of endings recently – our school semester ended, then the year, and several more personal events ended their long sagas during the month of December. It’s a mixed bag of positive and negative. Sometimes you are dreading the imminent conclusion and sometimes you are looking at the potential opportunities to follow. Beginnings and endings? Inextricably linked.
We pass through the year and experience hundreds of thousands of small beginnings and endings. This is the journey. You begin something and you forget that you were working on it until it comes to an end. You feel like it was just a second ago that you embarked, when really you were making new beginnings and new endings all throughout that time. Most often this is the case, but when it comes to the start of a new year, everyone is talking about what particular beginnings they are going to experience and what things have ended in the past (I did it myself for this blog). More importantly, they are talking about how they will celebrate and honor themselves through these endings and new beginnings.
Experiencing the journey of life as it is, a moment to moment set of beginnings and endings, is my one renewed goal for 2012. I’m anti-resolution (more on that tomorrow), but as far as loosely drawn goals go, I’ll be focusing on deposing destination mentality and learning to recognize the beginnings and endings that occur as we live through each moment.
I know there are points in our lives that take up more mind space, make us stressed or make us excited to see them happen. There are times when these big events need to have the floor. But sneaking in a little celebration of the beginnings and endings that happen in the everyday – whether that’s the small dance of joy you do after finishing a blog post or performing a minute-long meditation to close out the day’s events – allows for a richer life journey where we’re not taking these moments for granted.
Let’s celebrate life in the small moments this year, everyone. Let’s make it normal to look at ourselves and think “Yes!” (and potentially laugh at our own silliness) just because we’re here.
Hope you enjoyed this piece! There will be more on beginnings, endings, and celebrating life throughout the rest of this year.