bushofireee's blog post - A new year, a new start, a new begining..

Can we all really follow the cliché of a new year being a new beginning? Can we leave all what has happened in the previous year behind and move on? Can we simply forget what has happened and focus on the future? ....I think it is true in parts, but not entirely... Oh how I wish it were completely true, but we do all carry some things through into the new year. We carry all of the good things, and unfortunately, some bad, too.. I know this is the case for me at least.

We can however change our attitude, our vision, our outlook on things. Are the bad things I'm carrying through to 2015 really all that bad? Or is it just me thinking that they're bad which makes them so? There is a quote that is relevant to this method of thought:
“I once read the sentence 'I lay awake all night with a toothache, thinking about the toothache an about lying awake.' That's true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.”
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

I experienced a lot of ups and downs in 2014, unfortunately there were far more downs than ups. It has been the worst year of my life - or at least that is what my cynical thoughts tell me. I experienced depression, anxiety, angst, betrayal, heartache, being let down, and most prominently; allowing bad health rue my life.

Do I allow these shadows to follow me into 2015? I can let go the grasp of some. I can move on and learn from the bad. I can forgive and forget. I can learn from my own mistakes. The experiences in 2014 that may have initially been bad, have ultimately turned good. I have learnt from them - a lot - those lessons have been absorbed and will no longer be a hindrance in the here and now, and these lessons will also be important in the future.

There is only one "bad" thing that I am carrying into 2015, and that is the issue of my health - something I have blogged about before. It is bad in so much that it limits what I can do in certain aspects of my life, but there are many things where it has no affect, and that is the positive thought I have to tell myself in 2015. Life is and can still be good despite what I may be dealing with - and that is the attitude I'll be taking with me into this new year..

I am on new antibiotics for the following 5 weeks, and if they don't work my Doctor and I have already planned the next step - and if that doesn't work - we have also planned for the following step - and if that doesn't work, we're onto the next, etc.. Eventually this burden will be lifted and I can learn from it. I can experience and appreciate the things it has left me unable to do in a new way. In a remarkable way. Once it has been lifted that worrying shadow which has followed me around this previous year will evaporate, and I'll finally feel free again. Until then I'll practise the positive thoughts that I had lost long ago. It's not all bad and life does go on - in a good way – in the best way..! Starting from right now!

I wish everyone a great start to this new year - despite if you have an unwanted shadow following you. This can be the new beginning where you chose to deal with things differently, and that is perhaps the most important thing we all have the ability to do. We can't always change our circumstances, but we can change our outlook and attitude on them - and what better time to make that choice than right now, at the beginning of a new year!



Keep smiling, folks.. Life is beautiful
xx