Year End and New Year contemplation

Sunrise in Lovina (pic by myself)

Year 2012 is ending soon, in a little more than 12 hours at our place in Australia. I’ve been pondering how 2012 has been to me, and I think, in all honesty, despite its ups and downs, 2012 has been good to me. It started rough; I had lots of tears and – thus – resolutions this year so that I won’t have to go through those painful experiences anymore. I truly hope 2013 will be better, happier, richer, healthier and sweeter for me – and for us all. 

 

Year 2012 also has many sweet things for me. In addition to realising that I do want to live my life with my partner in Australia, I also sharpened the art of making cupcakes (including the icing), immersed myself in Japanese language through J-doramas, and fell in love with some gorgeous Japanese actors (Okada Masaki! Ikuta Toma! Osamu Mukai!). I made some new friends and rekindled my friendship with my old friends. My dad was ill, and because of that, I somehow got closer to my aunt and also my dear maid who has been helping me so far.  I created my professional cetacean blog and had some good news on the cetacean side of my work. 

I do have some hopes that are not realised yet, hopefully mainly because it is not the time yet. I hope that those dreams of mine will come to fruition before mid 2013. I do have my worries, for those dreams are related to my job and how I can live my life in AU (everything here is more expensive than in Bali!). But just as I was getting worried, I found a passage in a book my friend lent me. The book is titled ‘Ocean of Dharma’ by Chogyam Trungpa. Here, I quote the entire passage for you and me (p 164), in the hope that we will always dare to dream and work to make our dreams come true.

The Seasons of Life

There are seasons in your life in the same way as there are seasons in nature. There are times to cultivate and create, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally of course, there are times that are cold, and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are. If you realise that each phase of your life is a natural occurrence, then you need not be swayed, pushed up and down by the changes in circumstances and mood that life brings. You find that you have an opportunity to be fully in the world at all times and to show yourself as a brave and proud individual in any situation. 

I think the passage above says what I want to say to myself elegantly. I hope all of us end 2012 gracefully and gratefully and embrace the new 2013 with gratitude and hope.