The only time in my life that a year brought so much emotion and transformation in my life was the year my parents divorced. It was a hard time then and I was lost on an emotion ocean barely capable of seeing the water for what it was. Just like that year, the pain and anguish spearheaded the way to the next phase of my life. This brings me to now and to this final day of 2007.
A mirror is a reflective device that shows you exactly what there is to see. It holds us accountable to what is truly on the exterior and what is left only to the interior. Without a doubt I know that there are few in this world that can live with a different reflection inside from the one the mirror shows. It doesn’t matter if the difference is how you treat yourself vs. other people, or how you live your life vs. preach to others, what you do vs. what you say, what you think vs. what you feel. The mirror doesn’t lie, but you may deny what it shows you. For me, the two halves made a whole this year. I went from living on the inside to living on the outside as well. When I looked in the mirror I would see the person I was, and the person I wanted to be. I was inside struggling to get out.
Well, I did get out. I busted out of my egg and hatched with a fiery splintering of confines that hurt just about everyone in my life. Like a bull in a china shop I grasped everything I thought I’d known and everything I desired and pushed forward into the future. Like a general with his head sticking out of the lead tank I said “CHARGE!!!!” and the battle for my soul began. Not a battle anyone else could help with. In fact everyone who tried became a casualty of my war.
As I made progress on the creative front, I lost ground on other fronts. It seemed at times there was simply not enough of me to go around. But… I expanded. I grew wings! Like a phoenix rising from the ashes of my crash-landed heart, love surrounded me and lifted my sinking ship right out of the water. It set fire to my passion and set a new light in the sky. A union of the soul. My creative side meets my emotional side. My dreams and reality becoming one vision. A conscious, focused, eyes open, surefooted stepping walk into the unknown. For there is one thing I know now.. venturing into the unknown is the only way to know more.
Like Mr. Spock says in Star Trek V, “the universe will unfold as it should”. Many people in my life have shared this view and I hope they still do. I could never have guessed or planned or arranged any sequence of events that would rival what I experienced in the last year. If a trailer of my year were to be presented to me at the beginning of 2007, I would have scoffed at the unbelievable script and thrown it in the stack of “whatever” films.
Now I stand at the end of the film and the credits are rolling. I’m getting those tears that one experiences when feeling both joy and sadness at the same time. Everything has changed. Every single relationship has been impacted and down to the deepest parts of my soul I look upon 2007 as the most profound source of change in my adult life.
As tonight passes I will embrace the unbelievable nature of the universe, the celestial ballet that makes timekeeping plausable, and kiss my wife with the kind of passion that only a man who is awake can. To all of my friends wherever you are in the world know that I treasure and love each of you. As we play our parts in this grand drama called life2008 be sure that your mirror reflects the truth of you and know that love is with you no matter who or where you are. Whatever your problems are now they will pass. New ones will arrive and they too will go. The sails will fill again. The only person who can stop you is you.
Never underestimate your capacity for love, it is the one resource that you can give to the world in unlimited quantities.
Happy New Years world!
