What a mess! I’m surrounded by utter chaos. It’s incredible that in just nine months, I have managed to amass what surely must be the equivalent of a small forest worth of paper and a truckload of goods. As I try to chart my way through this confusing maze of boxes and suitcases, I pause and linger a moment on the memories from old letters, analyse each of those endless marketing brochures and flip through dated magazines which I never found the time to read.
I can’t spare a moment to fantasize. I return to my clean out. You see, having come to the end of my lease agreement, I have less than twenty four hours to vacate this flat I’ve lived in for most of this year. This upheaval is underscored by the fact that tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. Two things have therefore come to an end for me at the same time. As I study each piece of clothing and every piece of furniture that has been a part of my life in recent months, I find myself seriously weighing the need to box it up and ship it to my new address. I’m relocating to a new city in the New Year, the tempo of which promises to be dramatically different from the blissful isolation and idyllic lifestyle in this West Yorkshire town. I truly have enjoyed living here. I’ve met some very nice people.
At the same time, I stand on the threshold of another year. As I move, in a sense, from the past into the future, I am compelled to review my life and weigh my actions and inactions, my decisions and indecisions and their consequences both good and bad. I conclude that I should definitely have gotten more out this year than I seem to have done. If I had the opportunity to live the past 12 months again, what would I do differently? I’m slightly annoyed that I do not have the luxury of quietly sitting down on New Year’s Eve and reflecting. I guess I’ll have to take whatever time I can get between worrying if my post will get missing following my relocation and whether or not I need a larger removal van!
I’ve got lots of cleaning to squeeze into my nail biting schedule. I look round in near despair at the piles of clothes which lie scattered around the room. I must give away some of them to charity. A redeeming thought it seems, but which ones? I delude myself into thinking that I’ve got sentimental reasons to hang onto everything. I find that like most people, any length of time spent in one place is an unconscious invitation to acquire all kinds of odds and ends. Human beings have a tendency to just keep grabbing and holding. Small wonder many of our lives are cluttered with relationships which lead no where, destructive habits which keep us in bondage and recurring patterns of broken promises and aborted dreams. I wish I could reach into my past and wipe away mistakes, heartaches and failures. Sadly, no mortal has been able to master time in such a manner.
When faced with the finality of a situation, such as when confronted with death, man is unconsciously forced to attach the highest priority to those things which matter most to him. Faced with having to leave my flat in a few hours, I am forced to decide what I am taking with me and what inevitably must be thrown away or sent for recycling. Faced with the finality of this year, I ask myself what things I want to leave behind and what I hope to take forward into the next. At the end of the day, the choice is mine. Should I choose to continue to live with the clutter in and around me, then I have no one else to blame but myself. I think that one of the keys to living a dynamic life is to be vigilant enough to know when a prized possession, a hard earned qualification or long relationship has become irrelevant in the current scheme of things. Upon this awareness, the idea should be to either replace completely or immediately take steps to recycle, reinvent, refresh, reengineer, revive, rebuild, redesign, realign and somehow add a new spark of life to the dying embers of that flame that once burned brightly. One can either accept the status quo or seek change both internally and externally.
In this new journey before me, I will cherish thoughts and memories of the past for only as long as I do not linger on them and thus become blind to the fact that tomorrow brings with it new opportunities. I will channel energy into forming and developing relationships only to the point that they do not become opportunities for mediocrity and short sightedness. I will love my job only to the point where I find that I can no longer add any value to the organisation or to myself. I will throw myself into learning and self development and attempt to stretch myself to new limits. I cannot afford to become stale. I realise that bodies of water which have no source of renewal quickly become smelly gutters festooned with filth. I will assert myself more, reach more, push my ideas more, dare more, be more vocal and learn to communicate effectively. I will not be defeated by whatever life throws at me. According to Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, “No great civilization can be conquered from the outside unless it is first defeated within”. I will seek the One who speaks to the storm and commands it to be still and watch as the resulting inner peace will help me walk on the turbulent waters surrounding me.
I will knock my finances into shape, spurning the advances of bright neon lights proclaiming the latest gadgets, cheap holidays and fashion accessories. Money must work for me and I will not allow it to become my taskmaster. I will consult more with divinity and with humanity. I will listen more attentively. I will learn wisdom from the simple things and apply wisdom to the complex things. I will attempt to discover what love really means for I cannot claim to have understood its intricacies. I have hurt and been hurt too many times. In all the drama, as John C. Maxwell states, I will try to ‘fail forward’. I want to be happy. I choose to be happy.
In the mean time, I’ve got final bills to pay, accounts to close, post and deliveries to redirect and goodbyes to say. Time changes things. The old gives way to the new, the new runs its course, becomes old and the cycle begins again. I look out of the window and realise that the steel construction outside was not here earlier in the year when I moved in. Indeed, the old becomes the new. Very soon, it will dwarf my apartment block and its shiny new fittings will make my building look like something from a bygone era. Sadly, it will also block the warm sunshine which filtered through in the summer. Therein lies another lesson for me. Life is about competition. The challenge is to be the strongest, run the fastest, jump the highest, break old records and be recognised as the new kid on the block. I will trust in the Lord God My Strength.
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