2021 is around the corner and how quickly things have turned around in the world in just 2 weeks?
How quickly happiness and joy can be transformed into fear and sadness and vice-versa? How quickly can we gain and lose so much in life? How quickly can obstacles and sufferings be transformed into new shining opportunities and benefits?
Life is ever-changing and human beings have the most incredible capacity of adaptation and resilience, of reinventing themselves, building new cities from the dust and creating hope when there is none in the first place. ‘If you don’t have hope, create it’ – many years ago someone said this to me – it was one of the most important mantras someone has ever taught me.
This is the mantra that has kept me going throughout 2020. This is also the mantra that has enabled me to put my life in perspective when there was nothing to be grateful or to fight for to start with. This was the fuel for absolute, ongoing happiness when relative and transitory happiness were gone after I opened my eyes in the morning and everyone left the party. As Daisaku Ikeda says in his book ‘The Wisdom for Creating Happiness and Peace’ happiness depends on things outside of ourselves such as our socio-economic environment as absolute happiness is something that we must find and cultivate within ourselves.
It is true that we don’t live in isolation from our environment; we are a product of it indeed but on the contrary we shouldn’t become slaves or be an exact sum of it – we can only change our environment, or more precisely the way we react or behave in certain situations if we change ourselves first. Thus, in the same way we can create new waves of hope we can also create absolute happiness if we have the courage to win over ourselves and our environments, and to choose love and gratitude over fear and defeat. We may not succeed to do this all the time – that’s only human but not allowing ourselves to feel, repressing the saids and the dones, can cause more harm than good I would say. However, the key difference seems to be in (re)finding, (re)cultivating and (re)polishing our inner-self that many times goes to sleep until it wakes up shining brighter than ever.
For 2021 as for the rest of our lives, there will be no miracles or magic pills, there will always be ourselves to be the protagonists of our own stories in the most complex and challenging relationship of all – the intimate and eternal relationship that we have with ourselves.
To a 2021 full of hope and absolute happiness to you all
Luv,
Catia
