Believe Hard, Live Harder

One year ends, another begins. As I reflect back on yet another year of relentless challenges and obstacles, I take a deep breath and enjoy the calm before the storm, the calm only found in a space between, a space where solace must be found in reflection and anticipation. It's a place of residence for those who engage life with an intentionality that defies explanation. No categories. No definitions. No resolutions. Only a space.

At 31 years of age, I find this space to be my home. In 2007, I discovered I had cancer. I was hospitalized 3 times for overnight stays, two of them involving surgeries. I went to the ER four times. I also had 2 viruses, a 3-week sinus infection, a bacterial skin infection, some bruised rib cartilage, and to provide the perfect flourish, the shingles. At the end of last year, I wrote a post called "Resolved." It's a bit odd at times to go back and read what you wrote a year ago. Little did I know what lay ahead. It seems like each new year brings something to me that rocks my world and wrecks long-held or newly-formed resolutions. It's become par for the course. The beauty, for me, lies in the challenge of it all. At the end of each year, I still stand.

There's a disturbing freedom found in the exhilarating challenge of living out the calling of one's life. Perhaps it's fate, maybe it's ka. I recognize both. It's in finding ways to converse with these ideas that one finds true freedom. I live as a man bound by the chains of this freedom. It's why I stand on the brink of a new year...each year...with expectations, hopes, and resolutions, knowing full well that each of them will be challenged or rejected or both at any given moment. But I still make them, each year. I scoff at those who despise new year's day as a "meaningless" holiday as if Christmas or Thanksgiving hold some far more profound message. For me, the meaningless nature is precisely the point. It's all meaningless. But that's where you find it. That's where you interrogate it and fight it and embrace it all in one. It's the challenge of life. New Year's Eve and Day are a microcosmic symbolic representation of endings and beginnings, and the space in between. I'm 15 minutes away from a new year myself. I expect yet another ride of my life...because that's ka...that's freedom...that's the point of it all. In a juvenile defiance, I have two words for the impending new year. Bring it.

Happy New Year to all patrons of thesecondchance. I am thewalrus.