Why 2016 is so important...

"Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay."  - Robert Frost

     I am at my laptop, nursing a cold, watching the snow cover our pond and what I lovingly call "King's Mountain."  The snow gives me peace which is why I find myself asking why so many are wishing that the year 2016 would just "end already."  I've caught myself asking the same thing but then I stop myself.  I have a personal mission NOT to wish any of my time away.  Whether we admit it or not, to wish our time away seems to go against the very mantra that most of us would tell anyone else, including our elderly, our young, our friends, our lovers.  When we lose someone we love, we always wish for more time, no matter what the circumstances.  When time stops, so do we.  We stop enjoying the world that's right in front of us.  We stop enjoying the people that are right in front of us too.

     At the beginning of every school year, the faculty at my school have to get our picture taken and when I first started teaching, I dreaded "picture day."  Now, I look at each photograph, which are worn as our badge of honor and think, "This is what evolution looks like."  Good, bad or ugly, evolution has taken place and it is for this reason, I will not wish my time away.   As I sat with my family at different intervals this season, I saw all of them differently.  We have all evolved and as the wine flowed, so did our admiration.  Why would I want 2016 to end having realized that?

     I will not wish to be younger.  I will not wish to be older.  I simply have no more wishes.  It's the present that matters to me.  When I "waste time," I do it consciously, on purpose so that I slow myself down and breathe.  I will not wish for things to be different.  I embrace what I have and if change needs to happen, hard as change can be, I deal with the pain and the discomfort.  You cannot stop the hands of time, you can only live in it.  Like most of us, I find myself wrapped up in the routines that define our private world.  We can either get bored with our lives or embrace that we have one to live.  I have made my choice.  This is what it means to be human.

     This doesn't mean that I have become complacent or like every single thing in my life's experience...far from it.  I will never be complacent about injustice.  I will never be complacent where cruelty is concerned.  There is a price to be paid for cruel behavior.  We tend to hurt those who we love the most but it's funny that when we chose love over hurt, we end up getting so much more than we could have ever imagined. 

     2017 is right around the corner.  2016 brought more challenges than most of us would have anticipated but if you are reading this, you are still here.  You still have choice and you are still capable. Whatever the world brings, whatever politics brings  If you love, and are loved; if you feel empathy and surround yourself with people who can do the same, then 2016, as 2017 will be full and no one will want their time to be taken away.  If your world needs more love, more intimacy and more mindfulness, you have today.  You are today.  "Nothing gold can stay..."  You are today...