Living Proof

Just like Valentine’s Day, I sometimes feel like New Year’s Eve is somewhat a forced holiday. It’s meant to rise up sales of restaurants and bars, and have people celebrate irresponsibly and kiss an unnecessary amount of people after the ball drops. I remember as a child my parents would hold these huge New Year’s Eve parties and when the ball dropped, every single adult wanted to give me these big wet & sloppy kisses. I ran like hell before the ball even made it down to “5”... But the one thing that gets me is all of those resolutions, and most of all, the expectations. They all lead to one thing: disappointments. My sister put it well while talking with her daughter. She said, “What’s your ‘goal’ for 2012?” Doesn’t that sound so much better? I think goals are so important - to dream about what you want, desire or to become. An unmet goal sounds so much better than a failed resolution. Many resolve to lose weight or exercise more. Why on the first day of January as you’re sitting ...

They say your past defines you; makes you who you are today. Going through struggles and trials in our lifetime builds up character and endurance, so that we can handle future blows much more easily. Is it easier, or is it that we’ve become so desensitized to it all? Maybe some of us are just like, screw it, whatever! Or is it strength? I think it depends on so many various types of personalities. You have one set of people where they would improve their actions, words and strategies to get through it all, and then you have another set of people where they would simply give up and not care. “Your past struggles and trials in life make you stronger” no longer applies to the second set of people who have simply thrown their hands up and either sought solace in a bottle or worse yet, have inflicted some type of harm to themselves, or did the inevitable. It’s a nice, encouraging saying, however it doesn’t apply to all people. And yes, the bible even states this beautiful saying ...

New Year resolutions are easily broken; much like people.  We feel too much.  We think too much.  We hurt too much.  A very good friend of mine is making an interesting New Year’s resolution... “We should live in the NOW and let everything else go.”    It sounds so easy to do.  It sounds like the perfect solution to all of our heartbreaks and disappointments in life.  Is it easier said than done?  Maybe.  What if we put all of our effort into it?  Are we trying too hard then?   Sometimes when we try too hard to forget about something, all we’re really doing is focusing on it.  It’s difficult to focus on the positive side of things when our economy is literally sinking, people are being killed senselessly in wars and our world as we know it seems to be shaken up by the devastations that people have turned it into.   I’ve been noticing that a lot of people have been internalizing all these negative things happening in our world into their own griefs - even if they have nothing to d...