Newsletter: January 1, 2005
When newsletter time rolled around this month, I considered writing
about all the different news stories that made 2004 a year to remember.
I did my homework and collected the big stories for the year, but when I
looked at them I realized that the news from the last twelve months
actually made me want to forget about 2004 altogether! I might just
stick to my plan of writing about the news only when I want to make fun
of it. Of course, this left me with no angle for my monthly writing, but
I decided to do a little something different this month. Instead of
looking at the past year in review or at the future year in advance, I
wanted to see if I had anything a little more personal to mark the
passage of another year.
Along with other embarassing stories my mom tells people about me as a
kid, she often tells people how I used to collect all sorts of things
and keep them in my room. I didn't find out until recently that she used
to wait until I was at school and she would go in and throw out all
sorts of junk that I had managed to accumulate. Well, all these years
later, I guess I still tend to accumulate various things, but I would
say that my taste in mementoes has improved. Recently, I started digging
through my bags of pictures and other little things that I have saved
over the years and it really turned out to be a journey through my own
life. I spent several days going through the pictures, mementoes and
letters that I managed to save from important people in my life and it
actually motivated me to take some actions that I hadn't considered.
After going through one box, I decided to get on the internet and I
managed to find an email address for my first serious girlfriend. I
guess you could call it unfinished business, but when we broke up, I let
the bad stuff at the end define our entire relationship together and in
a combination of youth and inexperience in life, I let those moments
become the memories of our time together. All this time later, I know
that the years we were together were more important than anything that
happened at the end. I decided to write to her and tell her that she was
appreciated and that I had learned a lot from her back then. About a day
later she wrote back and it was fun to talk a little bit about our
lives. It was really the kind of thing that frees your mind from
mistakes that were made in the past and I'm glad that I took time to
write to someone who was an important part of my life at one time.
It might not sound very important, but I really think that this one
connection had a greater value in my 2004 than I would have predicted.
It reminded me of something that I tend to forget sometimes and that is
the fact that your focus will determine your destiny. If life is like a
poker game, then you are guaranteed to have many losing hands along with
your winners. The strange thing about cards is that you tend to remember
the big losers quite a bit longer than you do the wins. It would be fine
if this tendency was limited to cards, but it more often applies to real
life where a few bad experiences will determine everything from your
disposition to your expectations for the future. I've honestly had more
wins in my life than I could have hoped for, but it's hard to shake the
missed opportunities or those times that just didn't work out as you had
hoped.
I hate to admit that in my past I have held onto losing hands longer
than I should have, but after overcomining adversities in the last few
years and taking a closer look at my life, I think that my focus has
changed for the better. It took more than going through a few boxes from
the past and some emails to an old girlfriend to change the way I see
things, but I have a renewed plan to change my focus. I'm still always
going to wonder about certain missed chances in my life, but I think I'm
going to be happy to have had the chances at all rather than lament
their ultimate conclusion. It's good to know that it's never too late to
fix things that are important to you and that just about anything can
have value if you apply the right focus to it. Strangely, most people
will measure their 2004 by the news and events of the year, but I'm glad
to have a fresh outlook and I'm planning on a 2005 that is worth
remembering!
~SM~
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