New Year, New Path

The beginning of 2012, like each year before it, gives us the chance for a do-over, to fix the mess-ups from the previous year. Correct years of bad habits. Get in shape. Lose weight. Leave behind things that are unhealthy or unfulfilling.

Change. Growth. Renewal. Each one is a gift of the New Year.

Change is a good thing. Walking away from bad habits or draining personal circumstances leads to positive consequences regardless of what time of the year it is.

And we can change. Many things. Health can be restored. Relationships renewed. Sanity saved after a lifetime of passive aggressiveness or borderline abusive relationships are altered or even terminated.

But then, there are those things that cannot be changed. Fortunately for humanity they tend to be few in the scope of a lifetime, but there are still those things that positive thought and meditation and exercise and goal setting just can’t touch, no matter how good our intentions are.

So, what then? What about the things that goals will never alter, but which have the negative or even harmful effects in one’s life?

Perhaps, then, the goal is not change, but acceptance. Maybe when we face the mountain, and we have created strife and angst staring it down and willing it to change, maybe the only strategy left is to look at the mountain and in a deep breath accept that it is there.

And then move forward in spite of it.

The secret is maybe found in The Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Part of the New Year ought to be learning to accept what can’t be changed rather than kick and fight and suffer when such fighting brings no change, and alters nothing. It just creates more suffering.

Does that mean the journey is over once your toe hits the bottom of the mountain?

Not at all.

Change comes in the form of reinvention. New perspectives. New paths forged in the quiet recesses the human mind. Make a new path, accept what is and then decide what will be.

In this New Year, maybe peace can be found in turning away that which stand in the path, fixed and immoveable. Turning away rather than fighting a losing battle, or hanging our heads low in defeat. Peace is found in the new path.
Here’s to your new paths this year.

Peace to all.