The short answer is: You Can’t
The slightly longer answer is: You can’t and you shouldn’t.
You can no more do this than a mountain can remove its base as it pushes up from the earth through time. Good or bad, it is a part of you. Sure you can take off the top part of a mountain and still have a mountain, but the newest growth remains: that which is pushing up from the earth, allowing it to reach new heights.
Needless to say given the title, this was not a banner year for us. Without going into detail, it was challenging and exhausting, and, along the way, some wonderful souls left us way too soon. After having been through (or, in some cases, being in the midst of) all that, it is only natural to want to find some kind of confine, a border we can step over where we can leave the ordeal behind us, forget it, and start anew.
In a few days it will be a brand new year! XXXX (fill in the blanks) was a crappy year … thank goodness it is almost XXXX (blanks filled with consecutive year)! Out with the old and in with the new!
And as good as that feels, there is a part of us that knows the truth: it is all a continuum. There is no magical line that separates a “bad” year from a “good” one.
And as good as that feels, there is a part of us that knows the truth: it is all a continuum. There is no magical line that separates a “bad” year from a “good” one … an old year from a new one. It all travels with you, and it is all part of the growth that pushes you to new heights.
So, if you can’t really leave it behind … what do you do with it? You bring it with you and you learn from it. You can mourn for that which was lost and channel that sadness into trying to improve yourself in honor of those lost. You may have no fault in events that occurred, but still learn new ways to avoid them in the future. You can accept responsibility for mistakes that were made, and mend them into experience. You can learn and you can grow.
And, if we are honest with ourselves, we know that even the worst years had good moments in them … just as the best years had some sadness. It is all a part of our foundation … of our constitution.
So, HAPPY NEW YEAR! May the experiences of the past year help to boost you to amazing new heights!
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