you are not broken. you don’t need to be fixed.
"We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential." -Ellen Goodman
As the New Year draws near, many are creating lists of "resolutions," things we will do or do differently as January 1 arrives.
Some are simply focusing on one word to guide them in the New Year.
Some are dying, realizing in an instant what had meaning, and what merely filled up time.
Some are contemplating renting a ginormous dumpster and filling it with all manner of clutter that fills their home, but that is purely a hypothetical example.
Some are reading lists of the "best of" for the decade of the aughts.
Some are remembering going down to the Washington Mall to watch the year 2000 arrive amid fireworks near the reflecting pool and wondering if Y2K would mean mid-air collisions of planes victim to the computer glitch that would end the world–and wondering how on earth that could have already been ten years ago.
Some are cooking black eyed peas for good luck and some chilling the champagne.
The only thing I can offer amidst the plethora of good advice that people are providing for the New Year is this: You are not broken. You don't need to be fixed.
You have great, unlimited potential. Look for that, not for what you are doing wrong. In this new year, focus on what you can do, not what you can't. Look for potential, not flaws. Stop comparing yourself to anyone else. Sit inside your own skin, and know.
I don't know what I will accomplish in 2010. I don't know what plans I'll make or what places I'll visit or how many references I will make to Johnny Depp over the course of the new year.
But I do know that 2009 was a fantastic year for one reason only: I loved, and was loved.
And that is my fullest, highest hope for 2010.
[painting by Edward Hopper]
