January 2013 – Page 2

Here’s an outrageous theory: I think we’re afraid to be happy.

To be really and truly happy.

A few days after the New Year and posting my 2013 word, I got hit by the usual post-New Year’s quarter-life blues. I was brooding over several things, thinking about things that I want to have and want to achieve in the coming year and then I felt that familiar grip of fear, the one that makes me wonder what the heck do I want to do with my life now,Â the one that makes me want to curl into a ball and hide and wish that I’m one of those people who gets handed things on a pretty silver platter.

Then I got up, took a deep breath, gathered courage and told myself: Keep calm, it’s only January.

So in the next days, I found myself brooding again, more on the financial side. I was thinking about something that I wanted to get, something that I’ve been meaning to get myself for a while now but never got around to because I prioritized other things over it. Now it felt like the best time to get it, but then maybe it’s not because there’s this big trip I’m planning take this year and it’s either one or the other. So I let it go.

Then the next day, my boss offers me the thing I want, for a lesser price.

And I was all, I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.

It feels like a huge coincidence, someone selling that thing I want just as when I was thinking about it. I didn’t want to get it, because it felt like an impulse buy and I couldn’t possibly afford it given the other plans I have. But it niggled at me. I talked to my brother who told me that it’s too good of a deal to pass up on, and taught me several ways for me to get it. I considered what he said and did some computations, and realized that I may actually afford it. It’s going to be a bit tight, but I can afford it, and it will really be way cheaper than if I get the same thing brand new.

But I didn’t know if I should do it. Like I said, it felt like it was an impulse buy. It felt like I shouldn’t get it. It felt like it’s a test, it’s something that I shouldn’t fall for and getting it would mean I won’t be going to the trip I want to go to after all.

But what if it isn’t? What if this is God’s answer to my prayer?

At the stroke of midnight on 2013, I posted this on my different social media accounts: Happy new year everyone! 2013 is the year of the brave!

One of my online friends asked me, What do you mean by “year of the brave”? Well, friend, here’s your answer.

In 2012, I decided to choose a word for my year in hopes of battling my quarter-life emptiness that hit me a few days into the year. I chose a word because I was honestly grasping at straws, and I want my life to point to some kind of direction. I chose love not because I was desperate to have a word, any word — in fact, I had a lot of choices, but it was love that jumped out at me and I stuck to it, and tried to live it out. They say a word is a powerful thing and it can change a lot. Perhaps they were right, because when I look back at 2012, I think it was filled with love, coming from expected and unexpected places. And like I said in my recap post, I think 2012 was the year where I learned so much about love (and trust, and heart, and all that).

When December rolled around, I started thinking of a word that I will claim for 2013. I was toying on the word trust, because I also learned so much about it in 2012, so why not just take that and run away with it, right?

But there was another word that kept poking at me, that kept dancing around the edges, stepping across the line and looking at me boldly, as if daring me to declare it as my word. I resisted at first. To be brutally honest, I was scared of that word. It was an ironic reaction, given that the word is essentially the opposite of being scared, but I. Was. Scared. Absolutely terrified.

I was letting my fears get ahead of me. But at the same time, I felt that I could not deny the hold that the word had on me. After everything that happened in 2012, after all the lessons I learned, I felt that I would be cheating myself if I chose another word. I felt that I would be taking the easy way out, and I didn’t want that. 2012 was a good year, and I felt that 2013 will be a good one, too. But I have to stand up and claim it. I have to be intentional about it.

So with a pounding heart and shaky knees and the air full of smoke from all the fireworks, I stood up on December 31, and declared: 2013 is the year of the brave.

My word for 2013 is COURAGE.

2013: Courage

Month: January 2013

The Thing About Happiness

The Year of the Brave