TODAY’S QUOTE FOR New Beginnings:
“The chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your life. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.” ― Arnold Bennett
Reflection
Today is my birthday and it is also the day before New Year’s Eve. Although this combination of events has always made it tricky to see loved ones and to plan celebrations, it’s actually been the most serendipitous gift. For most of my adult life, I’ve spent my birthday shelled up inside (because it is always insanely cold) veraciously reading or writing about things that allowed me to reflect on the year past. And make no mistake pondering an entire year is actually an enormous task. So much comes up when you take a moment to be introspective – the insanely joyful moments, the loved ones who slipped away, the friends you made and the friends who left, the successes and the “still to comes”, the hopes and the dwindling fires you left to burn out.
Over time, I’ve come to realize that foolishly I am an eternal optimist. So of course I see the New Year as a fresh, untouched slate waiting to be etched with a new story, one filled with a magic that polishes the jewels in neglected hopes, so that they sparkle once again. The New Year is also a time to make wishes and to pray and most importantly to be grateful for your existence because that alone my dear friends is a miracle in itself.
We humans live in a strange time – far different I would suspect from any other time in history. We are pulled and twisted and left to survive in a relentless world that. never. stops. It’s too much. Far too much. But we can choose in this new beginning to not participate in the madness. We can choose to believe that simplicity is the key to joy. And that love, food, shelter and passion is all we need to get along just fine in this one life we’ve got. We can choose to believe that next year might bring some miracles if we open our hearts and close our minds to negativity, cruelty and thoughtless actions. And if we tell ourselves that next year is actually new, we can leave all the baggage behind us and let the cosmos disperse it into the great abyss.
So this New Years Eve find your clean slate. Pull it out of that soft spot in your soul and start writing. Make it yours and make it beautiful. See that next year holds the potential of all the Universe in perfect unspoiled moments of time. And with that go forth and create the life of your deams.
Maria
Photo: Anthony Russo
