#OneWord365 2016: Celebrate

2015 has been good to me.

I started off the year at home with the family. I went to Paris, continued an amazing semester with Mary and Lotti and Camilla and Constance and the rest of my wonderful friends from Middelburg. I travelled to Berlin, to Krakow, all over Ireland. I spent 8 weeks travelling to 9-ish countries with my mom, and had of a blast of a time.

I’ve made friends in places I may never visit again, and the people are ones I may never ever cross paths with later in life. I gave pieces of my heart away to each and every one of them. (I hope you’re looking after them.)

I came home to the open arms of my loving friends and family.

I gave my heart away, and had it broken. I’ve loved, I lost, I gave and I took. I cried on shoulders and was a shoulder for those I love to cry on. I laughed under the stars and I danced my nights away, walking home arm in arm with the most beautiful people on the planet.

 

2015 was good to me. I have left the past year feeling very grateful.

And today, my roommate of the past four months – a very good friend – got on a plane and went home. And I felt sad. Then I went out with my girlfriends to a movie and felt joy and laughed again. So, 2016 has been pretty good to me thus far as well. It’s been a good reminder that goodbyes don’t have to mean forever, and that the bad in life does not replace the good – they merely co-exist.

If I’ve come to learn anything though the hardships and the heartache and the never-ending happiness I find myself lucky enough to have in life, it’s the importance of recognizing the small things, and feeling grateful to even wake up every morning, and to dance around my room on my working legs, listening to music, seeing the sunshine, sleeping in a warm bed with a roof over my head and food to eat the next morning.

2015 was a year for me to love.

There has been a whole lot of horrible things that have happened to people this past year. It’s been a hard year for people very close to me, as well as thousands of people who have been affected by the war happening right now as well as the usual horrific things humans endure on a yearly and daily basis. I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to say that 2015 was good to me.

For this year, 2016, I decided to think hard about what I wanted. What my goal would be. It was difficult to choose my OneWord365 to live by and strive for in the next 365 days.

So! For 2016, my OneWord365 is “Celebrate”.

Celebrations do a few things: They recognizes good people who do good things. They allow yourself to feel happy and appreciate your good fortune. Celebration lacks envy, it fights pessimism, and it holds back the fear of the “What If”’s. It’s about letting go and accepting and being happy.

That is what I want for the next year of my life. I want to high-five for my B+ on a paper. I want to hold my diploma high with pride. I want to crack open a bottle of wine because I had a great day, not a bad one. I want to celebrate the people I have in my life. I want to see the beauty in the smallest kind of win and appreciate the experiences to learn from the biggest of falls. I want to dance more often and laugh harder than ever before.

 

 I want to celebrate being alive and all the things that come along with that.

So, take a 4:00minute break from your computer/ipad/tablet/phone
and go have a dance party. YOU CAN DO IT! CELEBRATE!
I even chose a song 🙂

However you feel about 2015, whatever hardships you endured, whatever pain has carried over into the New Year, or whatever joy you hope continues into 2016, I hope you find love, happiness, and laughter in the next 365 days. I hope you can move on, that you can rise up, that you can march on with your head held high. I hope you feel inspired every day of your life and that every night when you lay your head down to sleep, you have peace. And if you don’t, I hope you can find it within yourself to realize that you deserve all of these things.

I hope you go out and get them.

So here’s to you, and here’s to me. Happy New Year!

Let’s make it a good one.