“Life must be a challenge.”–Sri Swami Satchidananda
“Have a Happy New Year, and whatever goals you set for yourself this year, I hope you achieve them.”
The sales clerk handed me my bags as she spoke these words with a broad smile. I wished her a new year’s greeting before heading out into the swarming mall milieu. John, my husband, and I were in Cincinnati for a couple of days of relaxation between the Christmas and New Year’s holiday. We debated the merits of traveling as the Omicron variant seemed to be spreading like athlete’s foot in a high school locker room. In the end, we decided to take the proper precautions–as we have been doing these past couple of years–and head out for our planned excursion.
Back home, I was later reminded of that brief encounter with a sales clerk.
“Did you set any New Year’s resolutions for this year?” asked the young lady preparing to cut my hair on a recent January appointment .
This question led to an interesting discussion about whether or not to use the start of a new year as a reset button–a time to reflect and set new goals. The stylist was all for it as she described the way in which her three boys, her partner, and she had shared and recorded their goals for 2022 in a journal. She added that she wrote the goals down as points for review throughout the year, and they would serve the family as a final reflection on the eve of 2023. It seemed like such an intentional and thoughtful practice to have with her family.
Pondering this practice, I reflected on my own goal-setting practices. As I had explained to the stylist, my personality is such that I am constantly reviewing my own behaviors/habits. Any perceived “mistake” I make–whether real or self-imposed–I dwell upon, running and rerunning the incidents on repeat like insurance commercials during televised football games. I think about what I said/did wrong, or how I should have responded to a circumstance, in hopes of not repeating that behavior. Sometimes it works, but more often than not, I fail, making the same or similar mistakes. Ugh! It is a broken record of imperfection.
Perhaps that is why I am drawn to setting small, achievable goals throughout the year, such as training for a half-marathon, teaching myself a new cooking technique, or even my pursuit of weekly writing deadlines. These are typically structured goals, with steps from point A to point Z, and clearly delineated deadlines/outcomes. Then, it’s simply a matter of following through with each step, adjusting when there is a set-back, and continuing on, one step at a time, until crossing the finish line.
In the bigger picture of life, however, things aren’t always so cut-and-dry with step-by-step progress and a clear finish line. For example, when looking over these past two years of life with COVID, it seems one plan after another falls and one unattainable finish line falls to another. Just as I struggle with my own fallacies, shortcomings, and humanity, science likewise seems to struggle with virus variants far more complicated than my own list of self-imposed list short-comings.
All of these seemingly diverse thoughts came together when I reread the opening line of The Golden Present, a reference book to which I have repeatedly referred over a number of years. The author begins with the following thesis, “Life must be a challenge.” In those five words, I was reminded of one simple truth. If life is to be lived fully, then its challenges, from the personal to the global (and all levels in between), must be met, faced, and dealt with in some form.
From surviving the ice storm in 2021, that wreaked havoc on local power grids, to navigating the following days of ice melt and rain that lead to devastating flooding; and from learning to adapt, adjust, and safely navigate the “new normal” of life with COVID, to getting up way to early each morning and trying to be a better version of myself than I was the previous day, life in 2021 was certainly full of challenges. One look back at local, state, national, and global news headlines, and we see that every day, people around the world were faced with challenges far greater than any crisis I faced this year.
As I write, I am reminded of the wildfires that ravaged the west in the summer, the Florida condo collapse, Hurricane Ida inflicting destruction on Louisiana, social media’s documented toxic influence on youth mental health, tornados that swept through Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas. Even now, in the early days of 2022, headlines continue to demonstrate that life is indeed full of challenges, adversities, and difficulties. Even within my own work community, a beloved employee was recently severely injured when another vehicle ran a red-light–totaling this employee’s vehicle and putting this person in the hospital for months of recovery.
I could go on, but the point is this. I am alive and overall healthy. If you are reading this, you are alive–and I pray–healthy. Therefore, as 2023 progresses and the challenges start arriving–and you know they will persist–let us resolve to bravely face adversity while acknowledging that both the good and the bad are gifts of life. After all, as light can only be known by the presence of darkness, the exuberance of joyful moments can only be known due to struggling through time periods of frustration, and sometimes even despair.
We are on this earth for such a short time, let us be grateful for the moments–the good times, and the not-so-good times, when obstacles of all types get thrown our way. May we endeavor to fortify our faith in Divine Providence, believe in the power of hope, and may we cultivate love, or at the very least, patience and kindness for others–even those who see things differently from our own point of view. As the name of my reference book indicates, the present moment is golden, and it is a gift to be unwrapped daily.
Besides, who wants a life that is easy? If life were simple, there’d be no stories to tell around dinner tables, much less work cooler gossip; and, there certainly would not be any fodder for writers who need the challenge of discovering a new story to tell each week in order to meet a weekly deadline!
Steph Simply 