Taking Steps

Today is not the first step. Today is not the beginning of the rest of your life. Today is the continuation of a journey that began before you were aware enough to think your own thoughts. Many things will happen in 2015. If I had to guess, I'd say they'll be both bitter and sweet. But nothing that happens this year will be the deciding factor of your life, because no event can define you. Not like that.

  I have always preferred different measures of time than the changing of numbers at the end of a twelve month cycle. Other things communicate the passage of time to me better than a date. School, hobbies, the day I was born. These are the things with a greater impact.  Yet today is the day the world has chosen, a day of new beginnings, fresh starts. Many practical and intangible goals are made today, most never to be reached. Why do we make these resolutions? What are we looking for?

  I would chalk it down to two things: Self-definition and self-worth. Both are intangibles that can never be reached through accomplishing a list. The heart of both issues is simple. "Never let your worth depend on something you may lose." What defines you? Your body? Money? A talent or a hobby? Believe me when I tell you that if this is all you are, then you will assuredly lose it and with it, yourself. Worth cannot be found in what others see. Who we are comes from within.

  Are resolutions totally in error, then? Of course not. But as someone I used to know said, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." The issue does not lie in the resolution necessarily, but in the way you approach it. I don't think that the beginning of a new year is a good enough reason to start something. It has to go beyond that, beyond forms or conventions, beyond your desire to appear good before others. It must be a desire voiced by your soul above all else. If you do not believe in it, why do you think you will allow it to change you?

  All that to say, I have made resolutions myself. There are things which I want to accomplish in the future, yet the fickle nature of Time means I cannot put a date on when I hope to see them completed. They are not new things, rather those elusive tasks that are revealed after many days of searching for truth in the wrong places. I want to be a better person. I want to live intentionally, which promises a great amount of guilt but even more productivity. I want to love people based on the soul that we have in common, instead of writing them off for the superficial discord they bring to me and my ideology. I want to continue learning about my Creator, the One I thought I knew so well, though I have discovered in recent months that my ideas of Him may turn out to be very mistaken.

  I'm learning just how much I do not know. I have discovered that most of my life has been lived in unconscious confidence in myself and my opinions. That confidence is fading. The universe is wide open to me now, and I am becoming more and more prepared to learn its ways as each day passes. I believe in a God who loves me and knows me by name, who I speak to every day and who answers me, for He holds all the answers within Himself. I know right and wrong, but it is the grey areas I am eager to penetrate. I have learned that compromise is the difficult and beautiful line on which our existence balances, that without polarity, meaning has no place.

  As this year begins, with its freshness and possibilities, I am looking for answers. I am looking for myself. I am looking for a hope beyond my own, for a day on which the sun does not set, for a land where pain has vanished and peace is overpowering. I am looking for the meaning in the suffering, for the light at the end of the tunnel, for something that brings freedom from the chains, protection in the fight, and joy in the journey. This is the path I will walk, because I see no other that can promise anything I want. Tell me, what are you looking for?



~Margaret