Happy New Year !!!

  

I read this a long time ago and could not write down the name of the author because of the state of the paper where it had been written so if anyone bumps into it (original is in Spanish, this is my attempted translation), please let me know so as to give him/her due credit. 

New Year´s Proposal

As I get older my perception of things has changed and I have reached the conclusion that there are no bad years. Some are years of deep learning and others are like a constant break, but they are not bad years. 

I strongly believe that the way to assess the past year has to do with how much we loved, we forgave, we laughed, we learnt new things; how much we challenged our ego and our attachments. And that is why we shouldn´t be afraid of suffering or failure because they are both learning episodes.

We need to understand that life and how we live it is up to us; how we hook to things we don´t like depends solely on how we raise our willpower. If we do not like the life we live, we should develop the necessary strategies to change it, that is in our willpower. “To be happy is a decision”, let´s not forget it.

According to this, what we need to do to build a better 2020 is basically three things:

To learn to love, To transcend and To be happy.

These are the three things we should work on everyday, How? I believe there are three factors that can help us achieve them:

1)      To learn to love responsibility as an opportunity to grow up. A job-whether paid or not- dignifies the soul and the spirit and is good for our mental health. Let´s stop thinking that getting tired is something negative. On the contrary, it is a privilege because it means that we are giving the best of us. We have come to this world to get tired…we will have centuries to sleep when we are dead.

2)      To value freedom as a way of defeating myself and understand that to be free is not to do what I want. Perhaps next year we should exert our freedom doing what we have to do with pleasure and say that we are happily tired so as to be able to love more and better.

3)      The third and last issue to consider next year is to develop willpower, that wonderful skill of being capable of waiting, postponing immediate gratification in order to obtain something better. In my opinion, this is the greatest thing to cultivate all along the 21^st century.

So, it is due to these factors that we should focus on:

·         Sitting at the table with all the members of the family, at least once a week, preferably every day.

·         Turning off the screens (TV, laptops, mobile phones, etc.) while we are eating; let´s not answer the phone and feel that the only sound to be heard is that of our voices.

·         Treating each other well, with love; love our country, treat it well-as family. Greet the people you meet in the elevators, the security people, the bus drivers, smile…at least once or several times a day.

·         Making your house a home with the smell of food, scruffy-and even stained- cushions, some untidiness that shows that people live there. Our houses- no matter how much money you have-are becoming a place so perfect that seems that nobody can live inside.

·         Having contact with nature, play, laugh, have the time to share with the grandparents, print the photos so they can see them as they prefer them, enjoy their wisdom and make our children share time with them so they can understand their history.

·         Trying to grow up spiritually. Transcendence and giving meaning to our actions is connected to the new century intelligence: spiritual intelligence.

·         Reduce the use of technology for the sake of face-to-face conversation, playing old games, family reunions, meeting with friends… at home. Value intimacy, warmth and love among the members of our family.

If we manage to do this or at least commit to try, we are aiming at happiness; this does not mean a life without problems but the understanding that happiness is linked to the attitude we have to face our share.

Next year will come with what it has (challenges, wonders, the good, the bad and the ugly), let´s welcome it with love and gratitude for what we will learn from it.

               “Sufrimos demasiado por lo poco que nos falta, y gozamos poco de lo mucho que tenemos” (Shakespeare).