The Illusion of Time and Pain

We are coming to the end of another year, as we tell it. It's not really true that January 1 will be any different, fundamentally, than December 31, except that we have made our calendars that way and there's something about a blank slate, a new page, a fresh opportunity that attracts us. 

I think I say that every year. 

Regardless of what it means or doesn't mean, here we are, preparing to move into a new year and to say goodbye to the last one. 

What's interesting is that most of us seem to have forgotten the whole year. That is, there will be an overwhelming number of posts coming up this week that will tell us that 2025, like every year before it, was a year of total suckdom, a sucky-suck-suck-suck. Goodbye and good riddance to a terrible year! 

I have friends who do it every year. Hate the year they're getting rid of and look forward to the one that is coming. And yet, next year, they'll do the same thing. They have had year of total suckdom after year of total suckdom after year of total suckdom. And you'd think that they must hate their lives, that their lives must not be worth living any more. 

And yet, if you actually looked through their feeds, you would see pictures of celebrations, of victories, of smiles, of families, of good relationships, of happy moments. An occasional post, perhaps, of a struggle, but overwhelmingly, good news. Good gifts. Good graces. 

Good golly. 

So what is happening? How can these persons who fill their feeds with happiness and joy and love end up disgruntled every year with how their life is going? How can we live our lives and always seem to come to the end of the calendar weary? How can we have so many good days and look back and only remember the bad? 

A couple of things are going on.

The first is time itself. If you have ended your year with struggle, then struggle will be all that you remember. If the last few weeks have been hard, it feels like forever has been hard. If you're currently fighting, then this whole year feels like a fight. 

That's actually because it feels like time is running out. The days are numbered. The end of the page is coming. And...if you don't turn a corner now, you're going to end this year on a loss. None of us like losing. None of us like feeling like we missed our chance to turn it around. So if this year is about to end, if these pages are about to be thrown in the trash, and the last thing we recorded on them was a loss - a struggle, a fight, a defeat - then it feels like the whole year must have been that way. Good riddance to this rubbish! It's trash. 

The second thing that's going on is that pain requires more than we often have to give it. That is, we have to move forward with our lives and don't often get the time to properly grieve the hard things in our lives. So we come to a week like this bearing the weight of the things that weigh heavy on us, the things we haven't fully put to rest. The losses and defeats we haven't fully grieved. And with something unfinished in our souls, it pulls us back into the tough spots of this year almost indefinitely; it feels like we'll never get out of them. So there's something holding us here with a weight that feels so heavy...and it makes the whole year feel heavy, as we remember it. 

So did this year suck? Or is it the illusion of time and pain that make us think that it did? 

That's still not an easy question to answer....