Happy New Year, Happy (New) Me!

Happy New Year to everyone!!

Every year we seem to want to feel different about ourselves and lives; 'it will be a better year', 'I want this to go and that to come', 'let the happiness in and the hard times go' etc. 

Every new year there seems to be amongst people a new hope for things to get better, to finally achieve the long standing wishes and goals, to become our new, better selves. We set resolutions, we make wishes, we  gear ourselves towards big changes such as quit smoking, change job, make more money, move to a bigger house, find our lifetime (or many life times) partner etc.

Change is an inevitable part of our lives, of 'who we are' and as a matter of fact of the nature of the world. We are definitely not the same as we were when we were born and not the same a year ago or even yesterday.  Constant change whether we like it or not happens all the time, regardless if we are choosing it or not. Of course we enjoy the ones we plan and achieve and we are reluctant, fearful and uncertain about the ones that 'happen to us' without necessarily having much control over them.  Accepting that both exist and have their own merit provides us with the freedom to chose if we want to fight, resist, follow or facilitate them. Being oneself in this world will never be a 'smooth', 'easy', 'straightforward' ride; the world is not solely made out of comfort and ease these are not its purpose anyway. 

This and every (new) year might bring many nice, positive, pleasant things and some unpleasant, negative and not so nice things. You do not get to choose all of them but you get to choose how you respond to them. I know, it is the cliche which points out that 'shit happens' and we have somehow the power and responsibility to 'make them work', 'to integrate them' into our lives and learn to live with them or make something out of them. Any change can affect significantly the way we see, understand and experience ourselves, others and our lives. But why change can be so difficult?

We are all used to our own ways of being, doing, thinking, understanding and all these constitute the 'I'; 'I am, I do this, I think, I feel, I know, I understand, I see'.  Change challenges the 'I' by presenting us with something different (a situation, an experience, a person, a feeling) that we do not know and unsettles us from what we are used to. The full scheme, circle of what we are and what we are not breaks and we encounter 'the unknown', 'the other' that invites us to recognise the otherness and relate to it. 

My first though and message for 2018 is that being oneself is all we have at this very moment.. and it will change. So love it and be with it, it will soon be a past that you might not be able to relate to. Accepting, being and loving oneself now is an act of wholeness, because we are going to break again and again on order to grow and expand. And if we wont choose it, life will break us; nothing stays the same. If you are longing for something to change than work towards it, work hard and love every single step of that process as every step is the whole within the whole. It is the part that you can not miss and if you try to miss then it will be coming back again and again until you accept it. It almost feels like we are all moving consciously or unconsciously towards wholeness, towards acceptance of everything, even the worst of our nightmares (mainly our worst nightmares) as real as a potentiality as the possibility that might not necessarily happen to us but it can happen to the person next to us. It doesn't matter, because in any case we will be affected; every change affects all of us and our response affects it back. 

Every single word we say to ourselves and to others affects us and them equally. If you hate a part of you or someone else (consequently liking more another part), then you are favouring something over something else whist all is life, all is change, every single part is a part of the wholeness of your temporary 'I', of the 'I' of the other, of the 'I' of the world that you either accept and flow with, either it will come back (in this or any other life). It will come back until you accept and love it equally.

With Love,
Panos