Simon Sinek has written this on his Facebook wall: "The challenge of the unknown future is so much more exciting than the stories of the accomplished past."
If there is anything we weary life travelers need it is the enthusiasm to search for possibilities, to be excited about the future.
My wife constantly nag me for lacking the skills when it comes to huddling with relatives during family gatherings. She finds it bad manners that I shy away from their discussion and she is right. It shows self righteousness, a wiser-than-thou attitude. And it does not a good in-law make. So these days, I try.
Not that I am against looking back. Sure there are good memories to hark back to which leads one to appreciate the present blessings. What actually kept me at the distance for so long is the expected re-hash of stories from the last family reunion.
My difficulty in college, and in most meetings I get invited to after that, was to stay interested on talks that are a remake of what I already heard before. So there I am, dozing off which I find more productive than being awake and hating the speaker.
It is for the same reason why I'd rather be somewhere else, like the buffet table, during family reunions because I find peace there, no hating anyone for not knowing what else to tell but the nth repeat of his escapades of 1979.
But slowly I am beginning to understand. Indeed, there is something about the future that people would rather choose looking back. The unknown has always been intimidating and there is no comfort in that thought.
A cousin was asking what business to put up. For a start, he was consulting the wrong person since I have been struggling finding answers to that same question for as long as I can remember. Still, I love this cousin and told him several options. I really felt he was looking for much needed input.
Which was why I was not ready for what came next. I did not expect that for every suggestion I will present him, he would emphasize on what will go wrong. In the end, I thought that no matter how much advice I will give, there will be a setback of some sort he will surely come up with. So I stopped, wondering if this man was really searching for opportunities or a debate.
Whenever I start encouraging friends to save up for a house, a car, an investment, the answer will always be a flowery metaphor that, simply put, says “I can't”. Much like the cousin, I do not know how they still “can” when they have already sealed and stamped it with an “I can't”. And I think that just like the folks in our family reunions, they are anxious more than excited of what lies ahead.
There are reasons why life goes on as it is. And one that each new year brings up so clearly is “chance”. We are offered a chance to make things right, to make amends, to hope, to be better which we should grab without hesitation.
So once again here is a year of possibilities, of challenges that though threatened by how much poise we may lose while trying to cross it, we will give it go just the same.
Perhaps more importantly, here is a year of opportunities to do stuff that matters, a year that can bring about a change on how we view ourselves. And that is what I believe we should be excited about.
