In Review of the Review

The end of the year

should illicit some creative

burst, some all encompassing

year-end diatribe about the

life we leave behind and the one

to embrace as it’s messily born

out of the aging womb of the past.

 

I’m not sure I want to do that though.

I don’t know what can come from a deeply

introspective review of the past year.

I know when I failed, I know when I succeeded.

Do I need to catalogue memories and wrap them in a

bow and name them all, “Nostalgia”.

I don’t think I want to.

 

Perhaps 2015 followed such a familiar pattern of

triumphs, let-downs, hurts and joys. So common

in fact that I can hardly remember if they even actually

occurred in 2015. Did that really happen in the last 12

months? Did it? Are you sure? Wasn’t that like, three years

ago? Hm, just in June you say? That’s insane.

Completely unworthy of noting.

 

Or was it an eye opening year full of new

realizations, mind altering therapy, long wrought

battles of the brain finally won, acceptance discovered,

personal understanding revealed? Were there less anvils

dropped on your head? Were hearts opened to new

ideas? Was it a year to go in the books and referred to

as The Golden Year of the Self?

 

It’s both and neither.

It’s the same and different.

It’s the same hurts by old lovers,

It’s the new smiles by old friends,

It’s the old heartaches,

It’s the new desires unfulfilled.

It was the same stuff a new life is filled with.

 

I’d like to think that 2016 will be “My Year”.

I’ll turn 40 years old.  

I’ll reach some mid-point in life,

Some milestone of living,

a grand entrance onto the next

stage where I can act the part of a

grown-up but be far more believable.

 

I never know what the next year will

bring. I never have much of any

expectations, other than keeping my

heart from breaking too often and the

wish that people are generally good to each

other the majority of the time.

I know, from experience, that it will not be easy.

 

No year ever is as easy as we wish,

No month, day or hour spent in this life

is ever easy. Yet through it all, the fog and mist

of the future, I still think there’s a glimpse of

hope, a light, a flicker of something good coming

and that makes the new year something to look

forward to. It makes the only real difference at all.