Holiday Reflections

New Year’s is the perfect holiday for reflection. A single night’s arbitrary transition from one year to the next offers a wealth of opportunities both to consider what has occurred and what lies ahead. I’ve always found reflection to be the more valuable of behaviors on this evening, the creation of resolutions smacks too much of hapless disregard and disconnect. If we really want to have a more successful year ahead we should look back and what occurred in these past twelve months.

An in-depth personal assessment can reveal common trends and errors. Just what have we done in this past year? What were we searching for? Importantly we need to focus on a variety of issues; perhaps, most importantly blending in warm and cold assessments of our progress. A year’s collection of success need also be contrasted with a year’s collections of failures and misgivings. Looking to the forces that drove us in these last twelve months I hope we consider the reasons behind these issues and not fall short at simply identifying shortfalls and vying to strive harder in the year ahead.

We are a fallible species but with a focused, prolonged reflection we can begin to uncover many of the interior ingredients that make up our lives. It’s a chore for us, a dense collection of animals, but if given the proper amount of time we can uncover many of the hidden factors within us. I hope my own reflection to be successful and look forward to a 2011 with a better sense of who I am, what I want, and where it is I hope to be when the time arrives for post-2011 reflection and the dawn of 2012. I hope only to have learned.