Every year at this time I promise myself to try and get it together. Get organized, exercise, de-clutter, lose weight, you get the idea. It works for awhile, well, actually until sometime on January 2nd. Today, at my 7AM doctor's appointment for blood work, I commented to one of the receptionists about my disorganization and maybe I should work on that this year. She informed me that her New Year's resolution was to try and complete some of her resolutions from 2014, 2015 and 2016. We all started laughing, but how true, well for most of us.
I use to look at life as this script from beginning to end and that some professional life critics were out there to judge you on how it all played out. If the script fell flat at some point, you were doomed. Same thing with New Year's Resolutions, if you screwed up in January, well, it was all over.
Yesterday, after listening to a friend's not so pleasant experience, I wanted to say something positive. I did let her know that her situation wasn't pleasant, and she had every right to grieve the entire experience but I also wanted to let her know that at 21, her life was far from over. So, I told her that the experience had given her some really great chapters for her book of life. I didn't mean good, positive, fun loving chapters, I meant good reading life chapters. These chapters contain drama, tears, hurt, broken hearts, betrayal, grief and renewal. Those are messy life chapters. At 21, she will have many other chapters, though. There will be love, hope, excitement, travel, adventures, death, life, work, play, rich days, poor days, days of contentment, days of learning, and days of reflection and they will all become chapters of life.
Sometimes, in teaching or enriching others will learn ourselves. When something bad happens, we think it is all over, that it can't possibly be good again or ever just be alright. Yet, some how things change and one day it just kind of hits you that something is different. It is like you finished a chapter in a book and the next one has a totally different tone, and you can't wait to get right back into the book again. Some of the characters hang around for the entire book, some die, some leave, and some float in and out for chapters.
I have had some fairly traumatic chapters in my book of life in the last few years but like that 21 year old, my life is far from over. Here is to a new year and some new chapters for all of us.
