I know that this is sort of an unspoken thing: but the year is sadly coming to an end.
As I sit at my desk, 11:40 P.M, vigorously typing away – I am thinking about what I want to leave my readers with as they enter the new year.
I think I’ve found the answer: new beginnings.
The idea of a “new beginning” is incredibly enticing to any student, because it gives us the opportunity to start in a new light. I think that there are two sides any “new beginning:” the past and the future.
The concept of beginning a new life, to us, feels like an excuse to leave the past behind. I truly don’t think that it is that simple – just to leave everything I’ve done in the past to dust. I, like everyone else, am also apprehensive of the New Year because I too want to feel like I have the chance to start anew. But I don’t think that starting anew should have to mean leaving everything I’ve done in the past behind. I mean, mistakes, shortcomings, repercussion, sidelines . . . they’re the very things that make us the resilient creatures we are today. In other words, there’s certainly nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to the blunders we’ve had to face in order to get where we are today.
Being vulnerable – that’s something that I try to advocate for. We fear this idea of giving our broken parts away to those who are willing to hear it. We believe that we are fearful creatures who will only cause pain to those that are willing to accept us for who we are. The vulnerable parts are like the leftovers to a feast. Everyone else took all the good parts and completely disregarded everything that was left. We have this impression that humans will function in a similar way – to where they will disregard us, completely, once we have shown them the bad parts. Eventually, though, someone must finish the leftovers. . . and this is exactly how we view ourselves.
We shouldn’t have to be this unfair, this unfair to who we are. I so desperately want to be able to make peace between my past self and my present self, but it would require me being vulnerable to other people, and most importantly, being truthful to myself. I think that to reject who we were in the past – the good, the bad, our shortcomings and our failure – we just aren’t giving due justice to the types of people we could be in the future.
As part of an early New-Year’s resolution, I hope to advocate the same kind of authenticity and transparency that our generation seems to be moving forward with today. It is that we can be who we want to be without having to give up who we used to be.
As I sit and write out this piece today, I am thinking about how far I have come as a student. I can remember being the girl at the back of the classroom, who was without the slightest idea of how to communicate with her peers for fear of judgment and condemnation. I don’t want to lose her, but I want to show her how much she has grown since entering university here at SMU. I want to show her that the new her – the present her – is someone who is willing to take chances, make mistakes, and give parts of herself to the people that are willing to accept it without having to feel rejected.
Most importantly, I want to show her that change shouldn’t have to stem from the death of our origins. But instead, it blossoms from the seeds we lay in the past.