I noticed it last Christmas for the first time. Sitting around my grandmother’s living room with all of my family my heart felt so full. I am very blessed to have a wonderful family full of loving and accepting people. I turned to my cousin and said, “You know, this has been a good year.” She looked back at me and raised her brows. “You’re kidding right? This has been a horrible year.” I was shocked, but when I thought about it, I could see that there had been plenty of sad and unfortunate occurrences over the past year. I mean, I actually lost my house that year, how could I say it had been a good year? What I realized was, for me anyway, that with each negative thing that had happened something wonderful came from it!

I lost my house, but then I had the chance to move in with my father that I didn’t grow up with and develop a relationship with him. My family went through several different health problems over that year, but we always came out on top. We were closer than before, and when the struggles were over we’d always met wonderful new people that we now call our friends. There were a few very sad deaths that year, but there were also beautiful babies born into the world!

Every year at the holidays, particularly around New Year’s, I hear relief in people’s voices. They are hopeful, hopeful that the coming year will be better than the one before. I imagine we are hearing things such as, “2011 is going to be a good year,” or maybe, “I’ll be glad to put this year behind me.” I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t hope for better things in the year to come, but I’d rather spend my holidays appreciating the good things that have happened over the past year.

I’m very aware that for the past few years many of us have had hard economic times, and this is bearing down on our personal and professional lives in a very real way. Amidst the difficulty, however, there have been good times too. We’ve developed friendships and relationships that perhaps we wouldn’t have formed had circumstances been different. Sure, there have been fights and arguments, illnesses and deaths. There have also been wonderful celebrations of new life and new love. We’ve met defeat, but we’ve known victories too.

I’m not trying to pretend that perhaps this hasn’t been a rough year for a lot of people in a lot of ways, but isn’t that to be expected? There are 365 days in a year and twelve months worth of bills to pay. It would be nearly impossible to make it through without some degree of hardship. It would also be crazy to think that in a year’s time we haven’t also experienced joy and happiness to some degree.

I believe that we should always look ahead with hope and anticipation of things to come. However, rather than wishing our lives away for the day when everything will be perfect (because that is not going to happen) why not celebrate the good things along the way.

As a society we seem to be growing more pessimistic. I’ve been as guilty as anyone. We are waiting on the other shoe to drop. Even when things are going well we tend to look for the bad in situations. We need to let the bad things go and embrace the good things in our lives. It may be family and friends, it could be a wonderful job or financial success. Whatever it may be, we all have experiences and people to be thankful for, and rather than turning our backs on 2010 with a sigh of relief, I would propose that this year we take some time to remember all of the good things. Then perhaps in 2011 we can appreciate all of the blessings along the way and enjoy what we have, rather than allowing ourselves to be defeated with every disappointment.

My point is simply that we should take the days as they come, embracing the good things in our lives, and choosing not to dwell on the bad things.