Choosing Light

I’m not a resolutions person (too much pressure), I’m more of a general theme person. I haven’t decided on my word of the year yet (which, BTW, is another recovery/sobriety thing that has been hijacked by the general population and it makes me smile to know all these people are embracing long-held sobriety traditions and they don’t even know it…see also: anything regarding co-dependency and pretty much anything Brene Brown has ever written), but I’m so close, and this little mapping exercise from Karen Walrond is something I started doing in 2012 and is still my favorite way to work out my focus for the year. 2019 was a fantastic, exhausting whirlwind.

I know 2020 will be hard (I mean, we are four days in and probably already at war with Iran soooo…) and stressful and wonderful and sad and joyful. But all I can control is me. I want to focus on being less pessimistic, less judgmental and more forgiving. The world right now is a scary place. But hasn’t it always been scary? Maybe we just see it more clearly now. And by “we,” I mean middle class white women with privilege that has blinded us from much of the pain in the world. Regardless, the glasses are on, and now we need to decide how to carry ourselves in the world.

I hope to choose action and love and optimism, even when it seems silly. Because if there is anything I’ve learned, it’s that adding to the negativity and sitting in my angry resolve that everything will be awful no matter what, doesn’t change anything. It just makes me a miserable, ineffective person. In the words of my fictional, spiritual guide, Albus Dumbledore: “Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” Today, I choose light.