Halle Halle

So, a year has come and gone.

For some of us, it has been a fantastic year – a year where all our anticipations, our commitment, our hard work – they all took off and brought it home.

For others, it has been a year of endless pressure, facing life changing decisions – one after the other. A year where it may have felt like we had nowhere to hide.

And again, for others, it has been a year where the never meant to happen happened. The unexpected took place. It may have left us reeling from the aftermath or it may have left us wanting more.

I have run from the truth

Since the days of my misspent youth

I was hungry for kindness

I was lost in life's blindness

It has been my tradition, since I started blogging, to do a capping blog for the year. As I sit down to reflect upon the year past, I cannot help but ask myself – Where does the end of 2009, and this decade, leave me? BUT better yet, as we end that sentence, follows the thought – Where has this year BROUGHT me?

When you're born without wings

All you dream of, all you want

Is that feeling of flying

Of rising and climbing

The start of the New Year sees me standing on the precipice of an awesome new adventure – one I had dared to dream but never dared to go after. It is one that has been in the making for the last 18 months. As we go into the home-stretch, I am so filled with awe and at the same time, packed with trepidation. For a person with a multitude of commitment phobias, the strokes of the pen on the spots-marked-X come Quarter 2 2010 would be the biggest commitment I would have ever made.

If we left this year’s reflection at that, it would pass muster and join the ranks of years past. For in re-reading the cap for the last two years, I must admit that life has been kind - not one year has yet to end on a bad note. And to mark 2009 as my final year as an employee would definitely not qualify as a bad note. But the depth of what 2010 would come to symbolize would be lost if not for this year.

For this year, I understood and welcomed what it meant to love myself first; a notion that has been droned on and on by those in my circle. That it was not selfish to put myself first in all things. More importantly, that I need no other reason or motivation to go after what I set out to achieve – me, myself and I are reason solid enough to climb mountains.

We can all give the excuse that with living comes obligations - to our families, our employers, our friends. But surely, as this is our life, we owe it to ourselves to fulfill obligations to our own self as well. As an old friend mentioned over tea last weekend – I AM my most important person for if I were to collapse, everything and everyone who stands with me, collapses as well. Hence, I should be my NUMBER 1 priority.

I recall my ‘auspicious’ word (demanded at gun-point) from the love of my life (OMG! Did we just come out and say that?) said the day I turned 34 – the best thing to celebrate for the day, is the fact that I am ALIVE. Not just living and breathing but experiencing and embracing.

Always thought I’d die young
In these hands I help the gun
But it's too late for dying
Now there's nothing worth hiding

It was a scary step to take, especially when somehow, somewhere along the lines, you convince yourself that you’re “arrived” and there is nothing more to learn, no one credible enough left to teach. I am grateful, that these half-blind eyes of mine, was pried open to see the error of my ways; that I did not have to suffer a great fall to acquire such wisdom. Especially when the year brought so close to home the realness of human mortality.

I've lost love, lived with shame

I was humbled by my fall from grace

On the steps of decision

It's revenge or forgiveness

For this year also saw me burying one of my own. Yes, I know – but hey, we have to call it as it is and acknowledge that he was somehow one of my own. We cannot close the year without remembering that close encounter with the hooded one holding his scythe.

As I had corrected Mandy when she categorized it as being “happier times”, we will always remember it but as of “happy times.” My world and views have changed since then, that even the simplest of things brings me much joy, which probably explains why I was able to grieve and really close that chapter we used to call “being young and naïve.”

Halle Halle - We're one breath away

With the CIA World Factbook giving the 2009 estimate of the Malaysian female to live up to 76.21 years – I have about 32 years left out of this thing I call life. Tomorrow, Regret, Failure – these are not the things I want to be left thinking about when my time runs out.  

Halle Halle - From our judgment day

At the end of the day, of the year, of the decade – there can be so many lessons that I can scribe down. But nothing is as important as being fully conscious of the fact that this life is transient. What I achieve and amass today, I cannot take with me on the morrow when the sand in my hourglass runs out. 

So as I make our plans, set my goals for 2010, make that personal commitment to be better at who I am, and what I do. As I work toward it, I would do well to not forget to every now and then, look around. Drink it in 'cause this is it. It might all be gone tomorrow.

AND I know I can do it – cos I am not going into it alone. While as this year passes, I may have been physically alone, experienced loneliness of a depth that cripples you – yet, my persons were always there. And though I have said it many times before, I will say it again – Because you, you and you (you know who you are), I am grateful to be alive.

You leave it all on the table

If you lose or you win

In closing, I will borrow the words of Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho and say: May love fill your heart, compassion guide your mind, faith rule your soul!

You got to learn to love

The world you're living in

Happy New Year folks! Experience and embrace everything 2010 throws your way – You might just Be Amazed!

Learn to Love

Bon Jovi – The Circle

Author’s Note:

The words in italics are taken from the NBA’s “Where Amazing Happens”. It is on this campaign that the tenets of “Study in Ireland - Be Amazed” was drawn upon. Needless to say, when it involves a round bouncy orange ball, it is inspired by none other. "Instead of fear, be inspired!"