When a year ends and another starts  

During the last few days of each year everyone starts talking or posting about how good or bad that year had been. It was the same when 2017 was on the verge of ending and individuals started circulating comments, posts, and jokes all through the social media.

I started noticing that most of the comments were on how bad of a year 2017 was and in a way, everyone was glad for it to be coming to an end.

Under the influence of the common feelings, I also started thinking how bad it was and began preparing myself for a better year yet to come.

New Year night came along with its enigmatic fog and we celebrated the evening in an environment of good food, our favorite songs, and fore mostly amongst great friends and family.

It wasn’t until a couple of days into the new year of 2018 that I sat down to look back into my events of the past year and started reading my 2017 Planner.

Allow me take a break here and go back in time to the start of 2017 when I had decided to journal my days and put down the events and the emotions associated with it. A friend had given me a perfect planner as a gift and I thought it couldn’t have been timelier to have wished-for one.

The idea of journaling though had been passed on to me in one of my meditation workshops in which the facilitator was strongly advocating for us to put down our thoughts and emotions immediately after every session in order to have something written and concrete to come back to as reference any time in the future we needed to get the sensation of the occurrence we experienced in that moment.

And that’s why when I sought for the truth of what my year had been like in 2017, my journal was the best source to go back to.

The first thing which I realized was that I stood true to my resolutions of 2017 and had managed to achieve 7 of the 8 tasks planned for. The feeling of accomplishment was so ecstatic that made me even more determined to bring forward the one task that was not achieved and include it in the resolutions of year 2018.

The second thing I realized was how many lovely events and fulfilling goals I had experienced during the year which had already gone down the memory lane but were recalled back through the documented journal in my hand.

Detoxing and getting fit, performing professional and self-development talks and presentations, deciding to continue with my PhD, youngest son graduation, lovely family trip after a long time, successful proposal defense, children doing well in their individual lives, lovely relationships, and last but not least ending the year with a trip that made me realize that I have arrived at the point which I have been aspiring to reach in regards to self-content were the highlights of year 2017.

All of the above made me realize what a wonderful year it had been regardless of its ups and downs because when you start looking at your ups and how lucky you are with family, friends, and your feeling that you have arrived where you have always aspired to be, you start looking forward to another wonderful if not better new year ahead.

Therefore, one should never say I am glad a bad year is over, but rather say looking forward to another good and better one ahead. Because no matter how bad the old one had been, once one goes back and reviews it there were wonderful events in it regardless.