Auld Lang Syne

“Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.” Jeremiah 13:23

I remember when I was about 14 years old thinking the year 1980 would never arrive. I thought finally graduating from high school would be the best. Now it is 2010, and I am thinking there is no way it has been 30 years since I graduated. Where did all those years go?

At the beginning of last year, Martin had recently started branching out and enlarging his friendship base. Because of my innate shyness and my poor self-image, I have always found it difficult to cultivate new friendships. I decided though to at least open myself up to the possibility that there were new people out there who would welcome my friendship. The results of this decision made 2009 both one of the happiest and saddest of my life. I have met so many new people over the past year some of whom have become extremely meaningful to my life. These new friends have brought into my life joy and thrills beyond belief, but also disappointment and sorrow. Maybe I had just become so accustomed to my existing friends that I did not notice the ups and downs as much as I seem to with these new relationships. Whatever though I found my heart to be stuck on a rollercoaster ride.

For someone like myself who has always been a little manic-depressive the year 2009 became quite a challenge. I have all my life found it hard to find a calm balance between laughter and tears. So in a year where my job situation continued to go downhill, opening up my heart really kept me off kilter. While my new friends had brought with them so many new, fun, and exciting experiences still I could not count how many nights I ended up crying myself to sleep. As the year drew to a close, I began to think that perhaps one of my 2010 resolutions should be to withdraw back into my shell. I thought maybe it would be best to not allow myself to be open to such fluctuations in emotions.

Each year I find myself making a few resolutions only to break most of them by the end of January. Like the leopard, I find it almost impossible to change my spots. My behavior is so engrained into my personality that I have no idea how to change. I am much too weak to stop drinking, much too lazy to do the extra work around the house I keep putting off, much too scared to walk out on a job I have had for 26 years, and love much too much to give up on friendships that have encompassed my heart. I quickly realized over just the first weekend of this year there was no way I could close myself away again. I decided to forget all the silly resolutions I make and break each year. I decided to forget the impossible resolution to try and distance myself from my heart. Instead I decided to make just one resolution to simply try and have ten truly happy days during 2010. Perhaps that does not sound like a lofty goal, but for me it is a start…