Many of us do the same kind of accounting in our own lives. We look back at what happened. We look at what we did. We also may look back at what we should have done or should have done better.
On the flip side, we may look ahead at our expectations, fears, and goals.
In these reviews the challenge is not to panic ourselves, not overly shame ourselves and not get consumed in resentment.
The Past Year.
We live in a complicated world and it seems safe to say that the past year was what it was. What some people see as good others see as bad. For example, some people were happy that Barack Obama was re-elected and some saw it as a bad thing. Another example is gay marriage--some people saw it as good and some saw it as evil. Saying what the past year was is very much an individual matter.
Hindsight is Not Merely 20-20.
The old adage is that "hindsight is 20-20." It is assumed that we look back at the past and can see more than we saw while we were going through something. I think that is a mistake. We never look back at the past with 20-20 vision. We look at the past with a sense of weighted judgment.
How we look back at the past depends much on our current emotion, and what appears to be a present consequence of the past. We may be glad we made a choice, or we may be sad or even mad that we made a certain choice.
I have met many people who admit having been consumed over many years by . . . and beating themselves up over the way things or people have turned out. Some of these people were sold on these failures as absolute facts. They assumed reality--that something else would have happened if they did something differently. From this point in the present, it does not mean that the better option would have happened.
The Year 2013
However, many of us dwell on what we fear the most and if we dwell on it incessantly we can fool ourselves into believing it is a sure thing. The emotion that we can feel in these cases is tiring.
Mind you, I have to give some validity to this. The news media is leading with the Fiscal Cliff in most newscasts. It is some exquisite political drama, but it is also stressful because we do not know how it will affect us.
From this point in the present we do not know what 2013 will bring. While many events are possible, I strangely take comfort in the idea of economic forecasting, which says the past will happen in the future. There will be good and bad. There will be good news and disappointment in our lives.
Closing Thoughts.
I think that it is your and my responsibility to take hold and give things meaning as we see fit. As I get older, I find more and more opportunities to feel disappointment or feel worry. As we get older we have the chance to see more and more nuances in the different life events which can create disappointment or worry. Worry has never made me a better person and so the question is whether I will take those opportunities. Not all opportunities are worth it because they do nothing to make us better.
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