The year I pay it forward

IT’S AMAZING how 12 months can go by so fast. This time last year, I was mourning 2009. I dubbed it “the year of heartbreak,” severed relationships, and loss. I remember telling 2010 that it better be good to me, and it was!

It was the year I stopped being such a drama queen. I no longer post “emo” or negative Facebook statuses and blog entries. Oh, I do still have my bouts of drama, but I’ve learned to just talk it out with good friends.

Good friends, meaning people I know will clear my head and change my perspective. I make it a point not to rant to people who will just rant with me and agree—“Oo nga, life sucks!” Pity parties are a waste of time and emotion.

I go straight to people I know will pull me out of the hole I’m in. That’s the kind of company I’m proud to keep.

Let loose, being free

2010 was the year I learned to let loose and just immerse myself in the people around me. The saying is true: “Stop working on your issues. Get interested in another person, and your issues will resolve themselves.”

I don’t understand how it works, but I’ve found that loving the people around me and going beyond myself never fail to make my problems go poof! I’m convinced that a good bulk of our misery comes from focusing on ourselves and taking our lives too seriously.

I also learned to take 100 percent responsibility over my life, and as a result I’ve stopped blaming and criticizing other people.

It was the year I learned that cynicism is just fear and self-preservation masquerading as “knowing better.” I’ve learned that vulnerability is essential to being alive. We ought to go after the things we want, as if we have never been hurt.

Don’t be held captive by past disappointments, like they were still happening today. They’re not! Take the past out of your perceived future, and put it back into your past. When you look to the future, you ought to see a blank space where anything can happen.

And pain? Pain happens, too. There’s no point trying to protect yourself from it. It’s the saddest thing when people put up walls to hide behind. Walls block out everything, including utter bliss.

Walls rob us of our chances to truly come alive--to feel and experience life down to our bones. That’s no way to live. You ought to be jumping off cliffs and feeling the wind in your hair, even as you are still.

In the wise, wise words of Katy Perry: “... So take a chance and don’t ever look back. Don’t ever look back.”

Gratefulness

What I’m most grateful for in 2010 are the people I got to share it with. I’ve learned not to take it for granted when people keep me company and seek out my company. Those people voluntarily “inconvenience” themselves for me, sometimes even without my asking.

People continue to be gracious and go out of their way for me, even if I’m being stubborn or difficult—that’s mainly my family. There are people who love me, whether a lot or a little. Not that I’ve ever lacked love. I’ve had it all my life, and I got so used to having it that I forgot it was there for me.

I remember feeling depressed and thinking that life was shortchanging me. Then I realized how selfish I’d been. I was nice to people only whenever I needed something from them. I’d been hoarding all the good things that came my way; I was the one shortchanging those around me.

And then in the next moment, I realized the whole time I was thinking only of myself. I never ran out of people crazy enough to like me, love me, care about me, believe in me, and commit themselves to me.

For some reason I keep meeting the most amazing, funny, brilliant, interesting, generous, and loving people wherever I go. A selfish brat like me, I was feeling sorry for myself the whole time, when I was actually getting so much more than what I deserved.

I’m done hoarding. Now, 2011 is the year I pay it forward.

Visit the author at http://catedeleon.blogspot.com/.

By Cate de Leon
Philippine Daily Inquirer

DateFirst Posted 22:05:00 01/08/2011

Thoughts

I am not good at reminiscing events that has happened in my life I think, it's because I embrace the phrase that goes "Don't ever look back". I don't know, everytime the year will change to a new one almost everyone has this to say .. "what I loved about last year was blah blah etc... and I regret the most about was or for someone like me I don't regret anything", nothing wrong about it but it's just too cliche' and tiring to hear year after year.Well, I cannot do something about it, just deal with all that I guess, because at the end of the day it is the reality of life.

I have been working and learning for the past seven amazing years and yet I still remind myself that it is still too early to make a list of everything that had happened in my colorful life though, day by day I make sure I take them down and give prayer plus thank you's to Jesus.

Happy New Year everyone!!!

- Enrique' Fernandez