2014 is over, and it's already been 2015 for two weeks. Two weeks of the new year is already gone. My goodness, we've come a long way. Do we actually remember what we promised ourselves on the eve of January 1st 2014? And what did we promise for this year 2015? We drank and were merry on December 31st into January 1st, and now our second week, our first chance is over. We told ourselves this year would be different. This year, we would learn.
2015 is finally here. We've left behind 2014 and all of its mishaps. There were a lot of lessons that presented themselves to us throughout the past twelve months. There was a lot of time for growth. We may have watered that growth and let it bloom, or we may have stunted it, not ready for it quite yet. We saw deaths, riots, cries for change. 2014, you were quite a year. Even though you've already been gone two weeks, but did we even look back at what we learned from you? Or maybe in these two weeks of 2015, we've already repeated some mistakes.
So, what have we learned?
We've learned about ourselves, and we've learned about the world. How do we relate to the world? I guess, that’s what we've been learning about. What we've learned is that sometimes we fuck up. Maybe that was one of the first lessons we learned last year, and this year. Maybe on January 1st we woke up hungover as all fuck with countless text messages worth of mistakes we had already made. We started off the year being unsure of anything except how awesome we are at messing things up. We are clumsy with this life. We learned a lot the year before, and we brought it all with us, along with everything we didn't learn as well. Our mistakes tagged along, but that’s fine. Sometimes we make gigantic mistakes that we don’t even know how to fix. We know we messed up and we feel helpless and sometimes hopeless.
2014 was the year of accepting what we couldn't change. What we've learned is that life goes on despite the pain.
What we've learned is that we will hurt people, and there won't be enough apologies in the world to make it better because they want the thing which we can't give them. Our love, our attention, our approval. We hurt people because we are not clones of each other, and thus we won't always agree. We are all so incredibly different. We've learned that we cannot always avoid hurting people. It's going to happen, and it's going to be suck, but don't worry, people are going to hurt us right back.
What we've learned is that love can be selfish at times. It wants what it wants, and it wants it now, and it doesn't care who it has to hurt just to get there. This year we thought we were ready to be in love. Some of us were. Some of us fell in love with another person, a career path, a piece of literature, an unknown town, a big city, multiple persons, an idea, etc. Some of us got the shit kicked out of us by love. What we've learned is that love doesn't always have the best time management skills. We might be ready for love, but love might not be ready for us. We had a lot to focus on this year, and if we couldn't give our full attention to love, then it backed away, slowly, putting itself into storage for safe keeping until it decided we were ready for it again. We loved and we lost and we hurt.
We've learned that we will never regret and forget the times that we loved.
We've learned that sometimes people will be convinced they're right and refuse to apologize or acknowledge that they were wrong, and that's okay. We can't kill ourselves trying to make them see that it's okay to be wrong, as long as you own it.
We've learned that we will get hurt, over and over, day after day, year after year.
What we've learned is that we all have something we're fighting for, and if we want others to understand our battles we have to try and understand theirs too. We've learned that two people can be fighting for the same thing, but in different ways. If someone is fighting for everyone to live a healthy lifestyle and someone else is fighting for body positivity and no more fat shaming, they should be working together because they're fighting for the same thing. Fighting against each other never works. Fighting alongside each other has a much higher success rate. We're still in the process of learning that one. We love our causes and we hold them dear to our hearts, but we can't have supporters if we're not supportive in return.
What we've learned is that we are only human. We've got powerful brains and innovative ideas, but we can still be defeated by something so tiny and yet so catastrophic as a disease. Some of us pretend we understand the magnitude of such a disease but are too far removed from it to really feel it's affects. Some of us who were in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong resources, understand, and wish we didn't.
We've learned that there are some fears that we think we understand, but we simply don't. There's a difference between fearing something from a far because you know it's scary as opposed to actually being forced to be afraid of it because you have no other choice. It's right in front of you. Sometimes, we've learned that fear is a luxury. Some of us have a choice in fear. And some of us don't even have that choice.
What we've learned is that things will happen that we can't even explain. Diseases will strike, planes will disappear, people will take their own lives, innocent people will be abducted, wars will rage on for no reason, people will hate, and we will be confused. We want answers for everything happened, but life won't always let us have them. We've learned that sometimes we have to accept without knowing an answer.
What we've learned is that some people only want to hate. What we've learned is that we should only want to love.
We've learned that this world isn't always fair to everyone. Although we've come so far, we're not there yet. We've learned that albeit all of us are equal, some people will still be singled out because of the colour of their skin or who they choose to love. We've learned that people will die, and they won't always get the justice they deserve.
What we've learned is that just because we raise our voices doesn't mean they'll finally turn the volume down. We can riot, we can petition, and it will make a statement, but that's it. Things aren't always going to change just because we want them to. We can shout as loud as we want but there will always be people who have the power to just put their headphones on and drown us out.
What we've learned is that sadness isn't always visible. We can't determine how someone is feeling and whether they're going to be fine or not. We've learned that anyone, from the funniest comedian to a normal school kid, can be depressed. We've learned that we can't pass any judgment. Even if all of the signs in life point to happiness, we can never know the full story of it.
We've learned that even if we never knew someone personally, their loss will shake us deep in our heard and a little piece of us will leave with them. We can love people without even realizing it. We've learned that we are all connected more than we realized.
What we've learned is the sun always sets and rises again the next day, and we knew this before but again we learn it year after year, just because we need to. We need to constantly be reminded that the world keeps going, even if sometimes it feels like it's going to end.
2015, we’re stuck with you.
So, what haven't we learned? Well, that's probably a tricky question. There's a lot things that we don't know yet. A lot things will happen and we'll have to learn how to deal with them. I guess, we haven't learned much at all. We've experienced a years worth of pain and growth and too much love. We're still learning, getting there, and figuring it out but we'll never quite have it all figured out.
2015, what are you going to teach us?
