TRUTH is (regarding the title question), life encompasses all of the above. When a year draws to a close, it's easy to think of it in terms of reviews, wraps, and retrospectives, and there's always a need for that kind of thing but it remains a fact of the modern times (collegiate or professional) that there is no longer an "off-season", only PRE-season.

As I sit here and write my last blog post for As We PROGRESS for 2011, I can't help but to state the obvious, “time really flies".  I stare in awe at how quickly my younger siblings are growing and how fast life progresses. During the year, finding time to reflect is very difficult considering all of the ‘uber-important stuff’ that we’re involved in on a daily/hourly/secondly basis. When I finally have some down time to reflect on how fast life moves, I can finally take notice of some of the constants in life.

The one constant that really occupied my thoughts today is CHANGE. Change is now my constant in life. In the past, I’d resist change and fight it. I mean, who really likes change? Change is unpredictable, absolute, and full of unknowns. Change is downright scary and devoid of any real answers about what will happen in the future. Life would be so much easier if everything just stayed the same. As I grow older (and hopefully wiser), I’ve come to accept, and even embrace, change. Over the past few years, everything that I have known has, in fact, changed. My life, in one form or another, has changed. At this point in my life, change is excruciating, painful, exciting and full of surprises. I have accepted change, warts and all, and embrace it. Change and I now are starting to understand each other.

So, now what? Well in essence the year is over. Now is a good time to pause and reflect on the past, make new determinations and plans for the coming year and just be grateful for what we have been given.

I hope you are not being a ‘Grinch’ this year and have embraced the Christmas spirit. Isn’t it good to use this time to congratulate ourselves on areas (no matter how small), we have moved forward. I am not sure what kind of year you have had but if it did not go as planned, this is the perfect time to reflect on the positives and negatives, most importantly forgive yourself and others for anything you might be bitter about and move into the new year with a great attitude. Move forward with determination and a positive spirit, always remembering to reach out and help where you are able.

As I reflect on my life this past year, I think of all the changes and all the things that have not changed. This is the time to take the pulse of where you are physically and emotionally with your experiences, to determine the status of the relationships you have maintained, to analyze your accomplishments and to determine what is in store for you in the coming new year.

We often find ourselves pondering goals for the new year, whether it is to become more productive, let go, exercise more, organize aspects of your life, find a new job, or become more involved in the community, the objective is to “jump start” the new year with excitement, activity, purpose and a plan.

Most of us don’t like to think about where we have been especially if we have had a bad experience. We don’t like to think about where we are now as it is heartbreaking. We don’t like to think about where we are going as it is truly the unknown.  But the end result is the uniting of yesterday, today and tomorrow into a new future where there is a place for hope, and a new beginning.

We are all in the mind-set of starting a new year with purpose; continuity, commitment and community are a part of our daily life, but we often lose sight of what our surroundings offer when we are overwhelmed with problems in our lives. However, each new year presents challenges that we will all endure but also an opportunity to reflect, grow and reach further than the previous year.

Wrap up, start over, roll over and continue! Faint not and never give up!

Best wishes for 2012.

-- Ashley

Ashley Mwanza

Today we find ourselves living between the “now” and the “not yet,” in that space we are met by so many disappointments. Disappointment is another instinctive response to the ebb and flow of life, which when intensified becomes discouragement, depression and despair. These three negative states are obstacles to all human endeavour. The challenge is in learning early to regulate, control and balance the emotional ups and downs so well that we never experience discouragement.

Disappointment is something that all of us have encountered one time or another. I think that I would be safe in saying that some of you are battling it right now. We dream and we hope and we set our hearts on certain goals. Then the time comes when we comprehend that our dreams are not coming true. This is an experience that happens eventually to every person. Doors slam hard in front of us. Opportunities seem to evaporate before our very eyes.

Chuck Gallozzi put it well when he said the word disappointment is made up of “dis” and “appointment”. “Dis” means separate, apart, or asunder. So, disappointment describes a feeling of dissatisfaction or anguish, which is experienced when we are torn apart from our expected appointment with fate. Yet, we don't have to experience pain when things don't go our way. The negativity surrounding disappointment exists not in the real world, but only in our mind. It is not the event, but our interpretation of it that causes pain.

2011 has come with its highs and lows, at times I have been left so depressed but I have learnt to accept the lows in as much as I welcome the highs. There are so many situations that don't work out in life. And, that's just the way it is. Sometimes, we can change these situations. Other times, they are fixed and unchangeable and there's nothing that can be done. All this disappointment can lead to low self-esteem and feelings of worthlessness, especially if disappointment becomes a way of life. But disappointments are inevitable, we all have them. I write from experience.

Sometimes we fail to recognize how much life’s disappointments have taken a toll on us even as our bodies hold the stories. With pain in our heart, a bottomless feeling in the pit of our stomach, or a sense of collapse in our body, it can be difficult to know what to do. Disappointments are a part of the human experience.  But if you choose to consciously accept life's disappointments, you will discover meaning in your suffering. As sure as we live, disappointments will show up in our lives. Sometimes they may be small, almost petty or seemingly trivial; and at other times they loom large, heartfelt, and sometimes extremely painful.

Disappointments can be quite painful, regardless of their magnitude.  But in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Though we like to talk a lot in religious settings, about this word, hope with smiles on our faces, it is messier than we think. Fear, doubt, abandonment are all words that are cousins of hope as much as faith and freedom are.

Sometimes living with hope means crawling through tunnels of uncertainty with the odour of the past making us want to throw up. Sometimes, we wonder where in the world hope lives, for it doesn’t live at our address. Sometimes, we think our moment of freedom will never come for we’ve been chipping away at the same old same old for so long. Sometimes, as in the case with Andy in the Shawshank Redemption, hope means literally making your way through 5 football fields worth of excrement, the real stuff.

But, just as Andy modelled in this film, we have to keep crawling with hope that when we get to the other side, whenever and wherever this might be that something better will await us. Or, best stated by this film, “You better get busy living or get busy dying.” This is the choice that moving in hope offers us. George Weinberg affirmed that, "Hope never abandons you; you abandon it." 

Oscar Wilde believed  that what seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise. This is supported by Joseph Addison who wrote that, "Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures." So despite what you’re facing or have faced in 2011, it is time to move on in hope. Do not abandon hope.

True hope dwells on the possible, even when life seems to be a plot written by someone who wants to see how much adversity we can overcome. True hope responds to the real world, to real life; it is an active effort.

Let us cross the great divide out of 2011 into 2012 with wings of hope. Faint not, never give up!

Have a blessed Christmas and a blissful 2012!