January is naturally a time of beginnings, what with the arrival of the New Year....and resolutions...
But it's also a time of endings, and not just because the old year has gone. Did you know the suicide rate among Marines is highest in January? I don't know why that is, but it's a statistic that surprises me.
How January hits us depends on the circumstances in our lives. Have we got something powerful to look forward to in the New Year? Then we'll greet it with enthusiasm.
Have we suffered a profound loss? Then January will seem much darker to us.
It can be a tough month for many of us, simply because we're in the dead of winter (in the northern hemisphere) and we've got the natural come-down from the holidays (and usually the increase in our debt load from celebrating the holidays). I think I read somewhere that the most depressing day of the year is Jan. 17, calculated by the arrival of the post-holiday bills, plus Monday, plus cold weather. It's perceived as a lengthy equation whose sum is misery.
But this seems like a good time to take stock. Where are we, where would we like to be, and how can we get there? Where are we in relation to where we were five years ago? Sometimes, in the course of our day-to-day lives, we can lose sight of how far we've come.
And, yes, maybe things aren't as good now as they were five years ago. Maybe we see ourselves stuck on a treadmill, and we're pretty much just --- older.
But that's not really true. At the very least, we've had five years to grow as people, to strengthen or establish or heal relationships, to extract (hopefully) wisdom from our experiences.
Any day with laughter and prayer included in it is not a waste. Any day we have helped another --- in even the smallest of ways --- has enriched the world. On any day, if we take a few moments to look, we can find ways in which we have been blessed...and think of people who care deeply about us.
When we can do that, even our gloomiest days can seem a little brighter.
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