The Holidays, love 'em or hate 'em, they come around every year. And each year I look in the subtext for a lesson or thought that I might take with me into the new year. This year I feel like I receved two words; hope and openness. Those were the theme words for my holidays. Everything that came up became another lesson in how to be more hopeful or more open.
Hope to me means openness. The optimism that follows a really good day, the feeling we get when we have accomplished something, those are examples of when I feel most hopeful. But hope to me is a state of mind more than anything. I have to go there, even when I don't feel like it. And I think that at the core of all of us, there is a little bit of hope, even when all seems lost. Even the most hardened pessimist can feel a shred of hope in something good, even if it is just a nice piece of cake.
Openness is a little harder for me. I think I am an open book most of the time, but I don't always allow for the possibilities that COULD be. I tend to live in my safety bubble, hoping that things will turn out for the best, no one will be angry or hurt, no one will be uncomfortable, the doors will be safely locked against the outside world. But as I look at my locked doors, I wonder how many good things I have kept out. I don't want to live with regret, but I also don't want to stay walled up against the scary (yet ultimately rewarding) parts of being a grown-up.
So 2010 to me is about openness and hope... I call it my year of hopenness :-)
