I'm looking up at a canopy of black, coated with little white, off-white and yellow dots.
I'm looking at the sky, and I'm standing at an open bar, somewhere in the middle of Kingston Jamaica, talking to someone I haven't seen in a long time. I asked her a question that can echo in the consciousness of anyone who hears it:
What have you learned about yourself this year?
She tells me about relationships, growth and knowing certain things she wants in a mate, how she wants to be treated and all the whys behind it. She mentions several other things, all of which I nod to when i'm listening. Then I respond.
"This year," I say, "Has been about emotional boundaries, hitting them and then crossing them." I say to her. "I have understood key things about circumstances, my willpower and my desires that I never realized before."
This is true. 2007 has effectively been a year that reflects a touch inside my consciousness that feel likes the hand of some unseen God has been guiding me in the dark. I'm a planner, and most of the plans I have made have come to pass.
But inevitably there are things you cannot plan for. You cannot plan for the actions of others, you cannot predict days when unrequited love stirs within you and make you restless, you cannot envision moments that can drastically change your life because you interacted with a cerrtain person, and you can never know what tommorrow holds.
I learned this through a few interesting circumstances. If someone told me in December of 2006 that I would travel to Europe three months later it would be literally impossible for me to believe that, but it happened. If someone was to tell me that I would write two full-length manuscripts in two different genres as well as a full-length screenplay, I wouldn't believe that either. If someone told me that in 2007 I would enter a brutal mental battle to fight for love, I probably wouldn't believe it. In fact, there are numerous things that happened that all seemed to have a touch of serendipity. A chance meeting with a girl at a bar who read a certain non-fiction writer, lead me to write my second project for the year. Me choosing a specific class with a certain teacher eventually lead me to some other artistic pursuits, which might change the course of my entire near future in a way that was both inspiring and a little scary.
But the year didn't hold mere circumstances with interesting outcomes. This was a year that many people I know were going through a crisis about their age. "I'm a quarter of a century now" everyone is chiming. But I never went through that. I like to think I'm in a small Village in a mountainous region in China, where everyone lives to be 120. Twenty-five is a cakewalk. I will never say "I'm two thirds of a century old! My word!"
However, I do realize after this year that many people are effectively changing because or their self-imposed age stamping. It seems this is a positive thing for most people. I've noticed with women that even though they are supposedly leauges ahead of men in maturity, the age 25 thing makes them chill out some more, or get extremely antsy. With guys, most of them talk about plans, "Doing what I'm supposed to", etc.
This is another thing 2007 has brought me, the viewfinder to the picture of my aging demographic.
When all is said an done, I can look back on the year and almost honestly say I have no regrets. Every circumstance good or bad, or things that have been done to me that hurt me, or things that I have done, or otherwise, have all lead me to where I am presently. They have all added to my consciousness, spun around millions of times in the ooze of my brain, and produced an end result that I can quantify.
I don't really have new years resolutions. I think many NYR's are too vague and leave people in a strange situation. I think a New Year is merely a continuation of what i've already started. Therefore, instead of saying, "This New Year I have to get ripped, make a million dollars and start that venture capital company", I'd rather just say "This new year, in all the plans I have already made, I will hold myself to 30%-50% improvement in all areas I possibly can. " This relates to my personality, my responsibilities and my readiness to do things I have been hesitant to do before.
THAT is the main thing I can say about 2007, that I can adequately gauge new aspects of myself I was never able to before and make sweeter decisions because of them.
But obviously, I am human and I cannot simply look at this year in terms of achievements and numbers. Even this morning I woke up with a tingle inside my system, a feeling that clenched my stomach. I was feeling connected to someone I haven't spoken to or seen in a long time. I felt her presence around me, and I saw her eyes in the early morning. Why did she rouse up from the pits of my mind? I have no idea, but I have learned this tidbit over the last few years:
It is not the why of a memory or a desire that is important, rather, it is knowing that once someone touches you living or dead, they will always be a part of you.
That realization makes me feel calm when I'm hit with these odd emotions. I honestly don't believe getting "tough" is the key to growth, it is more about actively accepting certain realities. Two ex-girlfriends of mine are married and another two are engaged. These things are not things to really worry or puzzle, but to accept.
But this morning, I felt a touch of someone again, as if she was right beside me sleeping blissfully. It is fitting that it is at the very end of the year this happened. I have no idea if it is a signal from the universe spurring me on to act, or if it is just a random memory that decided to resurface at an equally random moment. Like many things in my life, I no longer question the cause, but merely accept the result.
I like the dynamics of life; the passion that comes with biting into a circumstance and not letting go, the lingering feeling in your chest when you want something and you can't have it, and that emotional release when you are two steps away from getting what you really want. I like the desperation that comes with charging into the unknown, a slight sense of trepidation when you can't see the outcome of an impossible situation and I like it when your mind forces you to hope.
I like my mind's mental picture of the faceless woman out there I have not met, the laughter of my friends and family and the quiet moments when I stare at the clouds. I'm also intrigued by that which I cannot see or hear; the laughter of my future child's voice, the feeling I will experience stepping onto foreign soil in some distant locale and not knowing what is coming next.
I like it all.
2005,6, or 7 and all the years I have been alive have had these things in abundance, and they will not be going away.
To 2008, and beyond.
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