Wow – am I ready for a New Year or what?

The first contours visible

I don’t know how 2010 was for you, but for me it was… hmmm… what’s the right word?

Remarkable.

Yes. “Remarkable” sort of sums it up neatly. If ever I feel the need to write my memoirs, 2010 will surely deserve a place amongst the most infamous of them all. It wasn’t what I’d call ‘an easy year’. With the global economy still in recovery mode and jobs in my sector becoming scarcer by the day, finding ways of paying the bills surely unleashed unknown energies in me.

Dark energies

Some of those energies were dark, I won’t lie about that; very dark indeed. And other energies were just amazingly fantastic in their

I come from the Old Media. This almost sounds like an immigrant in the ‘New World’ explaining that he comes from the ‘Old World’, funnily enough. My cradle was filled with newspapers. And paper books. Books that had a tantalizing smell if you browsed through them.

‘Old Media’ and ‘global economic troubles’ didn’t bode well for anyone behind a newspaper desk while the financial crisis hit us all. It is, together with fuel guzzling cars, one of those things that our kids in history books will read about as ‘their last days’.

Which, once you’ve sort of recovered from the original blows to both bank account and self esteem, is all probably just fine. No, I should re-write that. It’s not so much ‘fine’ that certain sectors of our society and our economy wither away – the word ‘fine’ sounds too cold, too indifferent.

I mean: It is what it is, no use ruminating about stuff for which there’s no future. Ruminating prevents us from the necessary adjustments. From thinking new thoughts and creating new ideas.

Ingenuity and Change

I have to give credit where credit is due: every crisis, be it personal or global, demands for ingenuity to roam free. When one’s life starts to slowly unravel, it’s astounding how quick some of us find new opportunities amidst the rubble.

On a scale of ‘lousy’ to ‘genius’ I guess I hang somewhere in the middle. It’s not the easiest thing to give up habits, some of which go back decades. It’s not a light-hearted decision to abandon one’s professional home, and go wander about in the world, trying to figure out which other vocation might be as fulfilling as the one that no longer exists. And one that will help pay bills.

This year that is about to pass was a painful one. One during which I learned how to shed and say farewell to matter and things I’d come to appreciate. One in which I life taught me to move the horizon from ‘What happens in 25 years time when I retire?’ to ‘How will I buy my food next week?’

Still, I feel deeply privileged. Deeply blessed. For this thing I enjoy everyday called ‘being alive’. To observe clouds being chased by the wind, or stare at the foam on the top of waves on the ocean nearby; to listen to the monotonous sound of a cricket, or feel the magic of fog on the slopes of a hill.

This last year, this magical figure of 2010, forced me to re-evaluate everything I ever thought was important. And life usually only knows one way of doing that: by taking lots and lots of ‘stuff’ away. Dreams, aspirations, friends, relatives, a lover, a job. Anything that felt like an anchor.

And that is why I appreciate 2010 with every cell in my body, and every thought in my mind. This year woke me up to life, and to what happens when you’re making other plans.

A Sage

Everything changes. All the time. The old Greeks already knew this, as did the ancient Indians and basically every other wisdom tradition the world has even known.

Buddhists call it “impermanence”.

The Greek sage Heraclitus said: “Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers .”

And that is why I appreciate this year, 2010, with every cell in my body, and every thought in my mind. This year woke me up to life, and to what happens when you’re making other plans.

It now feels I’m on a life raft, heading for 2011.

The mist slowly lifts.

On the horizon I see contours of what awaits.

It will be nothing I could imagine it to be.

It will be much more impressive than that.

Larger than life.

Because such is life.

Life is change.