2012 In Retrospect

BACK in grade school, this would be the time when we go back to our classes after the holiday break and our English teachers would require us to compose theme essays on “My New Year’s Resolution” or something similar. Idealists and young, we come up with these long lists of to-do’s and what-not’s that would supposedly make us better individuals and in turn pave a better year ahead of us. Honestly, I hated doing that. Year in and year out, it was always the same requirement that sometimes I think I recycle the things I write from the past year. Which only means one thing, I was not able to keep up with those items I wrote down. That or I had nothing else better to think and write about.

When we’re past the stage of making resolutions however and life had it’s way of wearing us down, it’s no longer New Year’s resolves we think about but more of how we coped with life during the year. What big decisions have we made? Were they the right ones? What things do we regret doing? Was it our lucky year? Was it a good year?

This is when I miss doing that yearly essay. It’s like having a clean slate all over again; a chance to start a new you by doing away from the bad and embracing the good. It was not complicated at all. But it’s not that easy for us now. One cannot simply undo a life-changing decision and make a better one because a lot has been risked and compromised already.

2012 for me was the year I turned twenty-something so it’s the same year I decided to be bolder and tried opportunities that I haven’t even considered until the decision time itself came. It was the year I spent Christmas, among many other family occasions away from my loved ones. It’s also the same year when I cannot count all those times I cried because of all the frustrations and self-doubts I had as results of the actions I undertook so far. Ask me now how the year was and I’d say it was not a good one. And after saying that, I would feel ashamed of my answer.

Whatever happened to that schoolgirl who was a bubble of hope, optimism and ideals? That girl would have ticked the highlights of her 2012 in her pudgy little fingers and afterwards she would have continued to list down all those New Year’s Resolutions though she hated how repetitive and tedious the task seemed. It’s a realization yet again that with age comes the change in perspectives we have about things. Sometimes, this change is not for the better. Maturity makes one appreciate things less as we are so bent on fulfilling all these seemingly big things that preoccupy our adult minds.

The year was far from easy. But I would like to believe that all those difficulties would be rewarded, if not this year, but the upcoming years after this. Witnessing the dawning of a new year is another reminder that we are growing older. We grow up. We mature. We encounter life at its toughest and this makes us cynical. But whatever this year would bring, we should never forget count our blessings. Cheers to 2013!