Dear Diary,
Running through in my mind the year that’s about to end, I realize I have some small notes for myself at the approaching threshold of the New Year. 2023 somehow managed to undermine my enthusiasm – yesterday after a long break I once again felt that inner joy when in imagination a smile-inducing idea forms, when you lace up your shoes and rush to take a photo needed for its realization, when you hurry home, sit at the computer and immersed in a graphics manipulation program mold the result which after a dozen minutes neatly settles on a social network bringing dozens of smiles. And what in life can be more beautiful than a missed and optimally utilized opportunity to cause those around you a sincere smile?
And that enthusiasm hiccuped not just for me – I see around me, in virtual space, more people who, having carried a certain light for a long time, suddenly closed themselves off. And the reasons for that closing off are sometimes quite obvious – there are a multitude of characters sitting on higher or lower chairs whose inappropriate word, inappropriate action or simply toothlessness and spinelessness like a bucket of water extinguishes enthusiasm sparks in a wide circle around them.
And this is not at all their fault. This fault is our own. Here, how little must one respect oneself, when you think about it, to allow your enthusiasm to depend on what someone sitting somewhere over there did or didn’t do. And we stumble here very simply – by allowing ourselves to believe that someone is above us, that someone has some unspeakable and supernatural right to influence our enthusiasm, our mood and our well-being. Precisely the fact that we, willingly or when nicely asked, elevate someone above ourselves is most often the cause of our subdued mood, our dampened enthusiasm.
In everyone’s world, nobody is above us – we ourselves stand at the top of our life’s staircase. As, by the way, nobody is below either. Everyone around us is simply an equal partner, asking for something and in return giving something, doing some work more or less useful to us – sweeping our courtyard or governing the state in which we live. Upon understanding this, grasping it, feeling it, we set down everyone we know and don’t know from our shoulders with relief and straighten our backs. At that moment we become fully empowered to carry responsibility for our own enthusiasm, for our own ability to spread goodness, warmth and a smile around us.
Enthusiastic upcoming 2024! The ability to unfold for those who’ve folded in. The ability to see an equal partner if not in every person, then at least in every other one. And, of course, strength and power to land a left hook on everyone who, through lack of attention, decides to demonstrate to you that they are somehow above you :-)
