Welcome 2012!!! I don’t know about you, but my year 2011 really sucked. So many deaths, so many goodbyes, and so many losses. Worst, we recently encountered nature’s fury where many lives and livelihoods were totally destroyed. Some memories are better off left alone; that was my 2011. But in fairness, there were also plenty of great moments: tears of laughter when the joke was on me, sharing good food, wine and conversation with good company, intellectual discourse among formidable friends, uncovering some mysterious delight of our psyche (my favorite past time), and the indulgence of zen moments with nature. Actually, not bad for a 2011, but still not enough to comfort the pain of loss of my very dear Sebastian (my beloved cat, who was 101 in human years, and who perhaps prolonged his life here on earth for as long as he could). Thank you Sebastian for those great years of love and comfort. Thank you especially for my family, for their love, trust and confidence. Thank you also, to all my dear friends for all the moments of support and for just being true. And of course, thank you nature, for reminding us again, that we need to take care of each other and of this planet in the most respectful way.
It’s another new year, another hope for exciting things to experience, other fun challenges that we should look forward to engaging, other moments of self introspective to uncover, and more importantly, another year to embrace opportunities that will restore and revive our human spirit to move forward and make a difference. What I hope to accomplish is to remain true to myself, continue to learn about life (which is never simple), and remain hopeful that even in dire times, there will always be a lot of good people out there who will lend their hands without second thoughts. I try not to blame others for the failure of things – we were there and took part, we witnessed what works and what doesn’t work. And now that we know the difference, lets pull ourselves to make it better. Some things lost, and some things gain, and that’s just life. It’s imperfection hopefully will make us stronger and more determined in light of what’s in store for us, and that remains to be seen.
Goodbye 2011 – live and learn, that’s all we can do, but let’s do it well.