MAGICAL BEGINNINGS

Hi there! 

How are you doing today? I hope you're doing good. 

We're back with the Guest Feature on the blog💃🏾. I'm sorry we took a break last year, it was due to circumstances beyond control. 

Anyway, my best friend became an OLD man today (had to make emphasis on the 'old' of course!) And I asked him to share from his wealth of wisdom with us on the blog and he obliged. 

So, welcome to today's gist, enjoy. 

There seems to be a magic around the new year. I say this with the best of intent, using "magic" here in an expressive or metaphoric manner and not literally. There seems to be something about the imaginary turn of the calendar that makes us want to be better people. (Yes, imaginary; because the cosmos does not measure years, and if it did, the new year would start at 6 am and not 12 am. What's that? Yes, I am fun at parties😅.)

And it sticks too. 

For about 5 days, 5 weeks, 5 months, we find out that we are the most motivated people in the world. Pumped up for the new year and ready to attack whatever obstacles we find in our paths. However, much like 90% of the population, we might lose steam. Life might happen, and people might happen, and we decide that maybe a little distraction is good for us, and boom, we are smack dab in the middle of the North Pole with no life raft, jacket, or flare gun. At least, that's how it often feels anyway (bear with me, I'm going somewhere with this).

So what is it about the turn of the year that makes us understand that we need to change and become better in our habits, systems, and expressions?

For us Christians, the new year is a very complex navigation period. We are coming off of celebrating the birth of Christ on the 25th of December (A date reclaimed from sun worshippers, for anyone in the comments who feels the need to point it out to me). And going into a period of new life. New beginnings and new efforts. We are grateful, and we are hopeful, and so we make an effort to act on said hope and faith.

Essentially, I'm saying that as the year wears on, we lose sight. Of God. Of Jesus. Of our light and the hope it gives us and we stay that way we are given such an intense reminder of Christ's birth and a symbolic new beginning that he has purchased for us that we often deviate and act on our every whim.

Why this happens is up for debate. But it is my very strong opinion that the loss of focus we have; the deviations, the delays, and the roadblocks we come across are because at some point we stop looking at Christ. At his love. At the hope he gives and at the constant reminder that every day is a new beginning.

There is also another period that we resolve to make real change in our lives. As a thought experiment, I will give you a couple of seconds to think of the specific date of the year different for everyone where we all make the resolve to be better people.

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That day is… drum roll please: YOUR BIRTHDAY! Very often, the feelings that New Year's and Christmas invoke are only matched by those of a birthday. What does that say? That says that in order for us to make the most of the year, in order for us to make the progress that we've always wanted to make, in order for us to grow the way we have always wanted to, we need to carry over that spirit of wonder and gratitude from today onto the next.

I'm not saying go around as a blindly optimistic person, devoid of acknowledgment of any real challenge in your life. What I'm saying is that a simultaneous acknowledgment of those challenges and deliberate gratitude at the opportunity for each period of your life is going to be key to maintaining the momentum you developed on the 1st of January.

This post is meant to be a short one (About 2 novel pages or 650 words, for my short attention span readers). So here is my one-sentence summary,

Live a life of gratitude, wonder, and focus on the real things.

God.

Family.

Fellowship.

And Relationships.

Stay safe out there, guys.

Bob.

Thank you so much Boki for coming on here again, thank you so much for your really inspiring words. I'm so grateful. 

And thank you, dear gist partner for reading, I hope you learnt a thing, or twenty, from my best friend's wise words, please say a prayer for him whenever you read this.

See you next week. 

Love,

Achenyo.