January 1, 2007

Discover

After reading Goal-Free Living, I have been inspired to create themes for my months, and for the first time, for my years. Stephen Shapiro mentioned this in his book as a way of keeping oneself in focus and reminded of what we are going through in life and why. For me themes for past months have included Breathe and Warmth. These were reminders to me to relax when I knew the month ahead was going to be very busy and and also to be thoughtful about my interactions with others, especially those very close to me. After having found quite a bit of good experience with these two past months of themes, I am going with Discover as my theme for 2007.

To discover is to find, explore and accept new experiences. Whether in school, a career, relationships, travel, or personal thoughts, it is about finding things that were uncovered and about seeing things for the very first time. I can picture this happening in my personal life as well as my professional life during 2007; I will be graduating college at Campbell, serving overseas in the Peace Corps, further developing close relationships with many important people and finding out a great deal about myself. As I watched the 2007 New Year's ball drop over New York City's Times Square tonight, I thought about the Mark Twain quote and my theme:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.


As the ball hit the bottom of its run at midnight the numbers light up like I have seen many times before. They flashed in yellow, outlined in red, and the crowd of hundreds of thousands below celebrated together. I smiled at the ball, the numbers, and the crowd, but mostly I smiled at something new I hadn't ever noticed before. In yellow, right below the 2007, it sat there in bold print: Discover. I smiled because I really saw it for the first time and I smile now because I intend to.