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BYE-BYE 2016

Saturday Dec. 31, 2016

On both serious and light notes, I’m in a happy space with no shortage of challenges and opportunities to create, to solve, to dream, to thrive and stay very much alive …

I had a good year. Not every objective reached, not every problem solved – but lots of small victories along the way. I got a year older, but feel younger. Gusta got a year older, but won her legal battle to continue living here with me! I’ve consolidated many things and left room for a lot of expansion – in business, in pleasure, in family and … he says hopefully, in romance!

My expectations are high and soaring higher every day. Not Dickensian ‘great expectations’ (though I’ve never read that classic). But I think, from what I’ve read about it, a different attitude about expectations for a very different place in time. My place in time – as if it could be put on a wallchart plotting my life from beginning to middle, to end.

It would be nice if that chart wasn’t in a paleontology museum where earth strata, epoch and periods describe the life span and fate of creatures now just know as ‘old fossils’. I’ve gathered some dust in the sediment and parts of me have legitimately decayed, declined and disappeared. Once strong teeth have been replaced by stronger and more attractive dentures. A stiff upper lip may be sagging but not everything is, thanks to workouts at the Y and Cialis.

But, to put all kidding around aside – but not to take ourselves too seriously either, this has been one very unusual year, one most people wish to forget. Easy, isn’t it, to think only of difficulties and adversity we’ve witnessed or heard about this year?

Everywhere around the world – or very close to home there have been tragedies and difficulties beyond our worst nightmares. But also, wherever we look, there is goodness and greatness in abundance. It has, for the many, been a year of abundance amid difficulties and challenges far more than it has been predicated on scarcity.

Did we come up short? Of course, we all do. Every year.

But, we’re still here. We can, and ought to, look back and smile – then look forward with a wide mouthed grin in anticipation of a wider better smoother road ahead of us.

Farewell 2016, hello new year … arriving any moment now.

Reader feedback:

NEAR THE END OF OUR ORBIT

Well put Mark - yes, let's boldly go where we have not been before! Happy New Year (almost)!! MK, Calgary, AB

Hi Mark, I want to wish you a Prosperous 2017 ~emotionally and spiritually especially but financially as well. And to thank-you. We receive from your musings year long…for example this sentence: “exotic place where joys mingle with sorrows, where great sleeps and energetic tomorrows reside”. That was so beautiful, eliciting such interesting images and feelings, SF, Lethbridge, AB


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