...the first blog of 2019!

It’s day 4 of the New Year and as far as I can tell, the gyms are still packed with motivated people determined to lose weight and work out.

Me, I’m taking a softer approach and starting by getting up and moving away from my computer for 10 minutes every hour. I read several articles about how sitting can kill you, so getting up and moving seems like a goal that’s very much in keeping with my main one of not dying for a while.

Speaking of death, and yes, I know – horrible segue, this New Year seems to be one fraught with loss, both celebrity and personal.

Yesterday, I was visiting a childhood friend who just lost her sister. And I was struck by how open, and raw, and vulnerable we all are in these moments.

Death has a funny way of slowing time down while simultaneously, showing us that life continues no matter what.

As news of another person’s passing reached me in the same 24 hour period, I couldn’t help but wonder what loss had to teach me. I’m big on “what’s the lesson in this.”

This is what I came up with:

Every tragedy or loss is an opportunity for greater compassion and love to emerge. Every storm provides the chance for us to hold each other closer.

We so frequently get caught up in the little things. We are focused on pounds gained but not moments lost. We lose sight of the brief flicker our lives are until we are stopped short, usually by calamity, and reminded that the only enduring thing is the love felt in another’s heart for us. And vice versa.

So in this New Year, it is my goal to seize meaningful moments, to dare speak up and out, to love with greater abandon, with the awareness that, in the end, that is all that truly endures or matters.

We have a chance to make this world a reflection of our love instead of our differences of opinion. I, for one, could benefit from “liking” fewer Facebook posts and loving more actual people.

We are at a critical moment. Our survival or destruction rides on our choices, and make no mistake, not making a choice is making a choice. Apathy, indifference, and inertia reap results just as well as action does.

So if we’re going to be resolute in our resolutions, I resolve to be more generous with my heart and constructive with my mind. That seems like a worthy endeavor.

I would like to look back at the end of 2019 and see a world somehow made better because I dared to give a damn and put myself out there and trust that I was enough to help in some way. I would like to know someone benefited not just from my efforts, but from my courage.

It takes unfathomable courage to live from love in a world led by fear.

Fear says you are different from me, separate from me, a threat to me. Love says we are the same, inseparable, and key to one another’s survival.

Yeah, I need to move more and eat less. Who doesn’t? But that’s just a small part of what I want to accomplish this year.

What about you? What do you want to see when you look back at 2019? Let me know in the comments. Whatever it is, I hope you see its fruition. 

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