This time next year.
Looking back on an entire year. It’s always a really surreal thing. Like clockwork, January has creeped up on me yet again. And it always feels like the year flew by. But this year especially feels just a little faster than those in the past. I feel like I’ve grown a lot. Not in a cliche found-myself way. Or some more-wise-than-I-was-in-2010 way. I still have no clue as to who the heck I am. I’m still a naive child stumbling through the world, learning things the easy way and most definitely the hard way. I still have numerous metamorphose to go through as I get older. And I’m still not in a place I want to be to be able to call myself…happy. Yet, I’ve grown. But we all grow once a whole stinking year goes by. We can’t help it. Time=Growth. Every day you have experiences that get filed away in the big cabinet of your brain and you lock them up and throw away the key. You don’t think much of them as they’re happening. You just go with the flow, until a year later you find that cabinet, bust it open, and revel in the things inside that is your life. Whether you noticed or not, stuff happened. You’ve spent time with people. You’ve gone places. You’ve had dumb arguments. You’ve laughed until your insides hurt. You’ve just done the only thing you can do. You lived your own life. And all of these things put together have contributed to you just having a little more knowledge than you had before. Knowledge about how the world works. A gain in understanding. Through experience. That’s growth to me.
I came across this amazing quote by Nick Gaiman today:
“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”
He’s got it. He hit the nail on the head or whatever. But I think it goes even further than that. You not only learn from your mistakes. But you also learn from your triumphs. Your struggles. Your bliss. Your heartache. You learn from everything that has happened to you. Because it happened to you. Not everything had to have been an epic life lesson. Every emotion you’ve felt has enabled you to tap into your real person. For me personally, this year has been filled with confusion, reflection, deliberation, and to a certain extent, straight up uncertainty. And I sure as heck have learned and grown…even from being so unsure about everything. And what’s even more is that it’s funny trying to think about the worries that consumed you this time last year. Because I have no idea what thoughts were racing through my brain a year ago today. And that right there proves one thing to me: the things I am worried about right now, will be non-existent in a year. Heck, I’ll give it a month. I will have moved on from my current stresses, and on to the next, which I will pull through from, until once again gaining something new to focus my anxiety upon. All the while, capturing snippets of happy times in between. That’s just how life works. So you can’t kill yourself over whatever is happening at present. You’re gonna get through it. You always get through it. One way or another.
Anyways, I was going to write a list for what I want to have accomplished this time next year. Until I realized it’s not necessary. Inside, I know what I want. I got a few general goals up in this head that I definitely want to acheive. But I can figure it out as I go along. I don’t need to make a checklist. I know what I want right now. And if something in my life happens as I go along that makes me change my mind about certain things, so be it. I’ll take it from there. Change stops for no list you made in the past. You gotta roll with the punches or you’re gonna get lost. As I’ve realized time and time again, things in life do not work out how you think they will. So why invest in an idea that may never happen? It may crash and burn. But you’ll eventually get back on your feet and find another way. Or you may not. You may take a completely different road and realize you’re much happier than you ever would have been otherwise. These past 12 months have felt like a giant segway into what I’m really hoping to get out of life. It’s been an odd chunk of my existence, I admit. It’s been necessary to get to the next chapter., though. And at times, it has been priceless. So this time next year I want only this: To have grown as a person a little bit more than I am now. And to be closer to what I eventually want to get to, whatever that may be. I want to be more content with where I am at present, instead of always longing for some future I don’t even have a clue about. This time next year I won’t be fretting over the things I’m currently fretting over. I’m not even going to remember them. This time next year I will have new worries. Ones I can’t even possibly make up in my imagination right now. But that’s ok. Because I’m gonna get through them then. And I’m gonna get through them now.
-
sarahnoodles posted this
