Monday, January 28, 2013

could be a year of contradictions. or not.


I’ve said this just before the turn of the New Year: 2012 was not just something. It was more than anything that I have expected.

Just like the previous years, it wasn’t an entirely smooth ride. But it was nonetheless remarkable, beautiful, and grotesque like some sort of creature you’d both fear and cuddle. Contradiction, it is in every life’s DNA. 

When I look for sunlight, it pours. When I decide to stay, someone leaves. When I yearn for that, I get this instead. I am not complaining though I think I’ve come far too short to how I wanted things to work out. I’ve come far too short to make some semblance of major accomplishment. I’ve come far too short to many, many others. 

But due to the very same contradictions that go speeding into my direction, there are other routes of realization that open along the way. 

It is a complicated matter, this sudden awareness, this understanding that there is more to what we know and have faith in. And it is through this that you could get through all hurdles because you know yourself much better than anybody else. 

Just like any beautiful irony, this could be brought about from a lot of things: trips to foreign places, situations we find ourselves in, people who come into our lives. 

The latter, usually, makes the most impact. At least for me. It is because it is the people that precedes and propels us to which place we could go or what situation we could be in. The human mobilizes the happenings. 

That is why 2012, really, is not just about contradictions. Through the people we meet and through the lives they live, we learn that our failures are not entirely a collapse of ideals but a chance to assess what could be done next time. For the good. 

It could be about seizing that success story which you’ve been dreaming for yourself and your loved ones. It could be about painting one day on a canvas which you haven’t done in years. It could be about browsing old pictures without that ache in the heart. It could be about acknowledging the truth to your family. It could be about finishing that draft of a story in your archives. It could be about doing sacrifices for someone else. It could be about a whole lot of things. 

Because in the end, as how someone dear to me pointed out, what is important is the attitude of gratitude. Let us simply be thankful. Someone else could have it worse. 

Being grateful allows the rekindling of hope which strengthens all that we need, especially love. 

Yes, tomorrow may be uncertain but it is our decision now that shapes it. I decide right now to be better. Not only for myself but also for my beloved. It will be a work in progress, of course. And it would be hard, for what we see and hear often tells a different story, but we will manage. 

This 2013, you and I, we can work it out.