The Healthy Cookie

As we come to the end of a year and welcome in a shiny fresh new one, it inevitably becomes a time when we reflect back on the year we have had and think ahead to what we would like the new year to bring. We think of all that was good about the past year and of all that perhaps didn’t go as we would have liked. Subsequently, we make resolutions for ourselves in an attempt to help the new year to unfold in just the way that our hearts desire.

If I have learned anything in the past year, it is that no amount of planning, no type of well-intentioned resolution and no amount of hoping, wishing or praying will have much bearing on the way our lives unfold. Things happen, good and bad, and we have little choice but to grow and change and adapt. All we can really do is allow ourselves to evolve right along with the rest of the universe as we move forward, embracing, as best we can, the unknowns that come.

One year ago, I could not have imagined that this is where I would be today and that I would have experienced the journey I have had that brought me to this place. This past year has been both the best and the worst, the toughest and the easiest, and though there have been experiences I would wish to have passed me by, I am better for having had them.

This year, for the first time, I am making absolutely no New Year’s resolutions. I plan only to continue living as I learned to do in California and that is happily. I will continue being good to myself. I will eat when I am hungry, I will rest when I am tired and I will move myself about when my body wants it. I will keep the company I chose to keep, read the books I want to read, wear the silly clothes I want to wear. I will not feel guilty in the least for doing what my heart desires. And most of all, I will not fear or worry about the countless unknowns that lie ahead.

As I’ve said, we can’t control what hurdles, opportunities, set backs or good fortune may fall in our paths. All we really can control is how we handle ourselves under such circumstances. And as I resolved to do when I fell ill, I intend to encounter both the good and the bad with the greatest calmness and equanimity that I can manage. And that, of course, just means doing the best that I can on any given day.

January 1, 2006. I can’t recall what I was doing on this day. I do know that the previous night was my worst New Year’s eve ever, complete with acrobats, the East end of Toronto, a US army dude who kept yelling ‘Huah’ and my mother’s attempt to set me up on a blind date (the date was not with the American soldier). I was dreading going back to work. I hated my job and was anticipating an interview with a new company that I hoped would be better (I got that job and the company was worse). I was drinking on occasion and enjoying the rare sugar indulgence. I felt tired a lot and I felt like the walls of my apartment were closing in on me. Nothing seemed quite right. I felt, in some way, that I had missed the boat I was meant to board, and that I was just floundering at sea searching desperately to find happiness and balance in my life.

Never could I have imagined, from that place last year, that I would now be sitting in my new home, fresh from three months in Cali, feeling strong and healthy, excitedly awaiting my first day of school in a week’s time and even more excited at the prospect of all things to come. The course my life has taken in the last year is certainly not what I had planned. If someone, on January 1, of 2006 had told me what the year would bring, I would have thought they were off their rocker and hadn’t the faintest idea who I was or what I was about.

Though, at that time, I had my certainty there was something very wrong inside my body, I did not know this new word would become a part of my life and change it’s course so dramatically and so rightly. “Crohn’s”. It had been a part of my cousin’s life. It was part of some friend’s lives. I just didn’t think this word, what it represents and everything else that goes along with it would have such an impact on my life. Since August, when i was diagnosed, the word “Crohn’s” has passed through my mind on a daily, if not hourly basis. I just keep picturing it as this little gremlin inside me; a gremlin that I let get the better of me. This little gremlin turned my life upside down. What I didn’t know at the time, is that upside down is exactly where I was supposed to be. What was once upside down has become right-side up. It was only my perspective that changed.

I have made enough changes, enough sacrifices and enough resolutions over the course of the past year that I have run out. So I make no resolutions for the year. However, though I know it is a fruitless effort, I do have one hope and that is for a few less extremes. I still want the ups and downs, the happiness and sadness, the good and the bad. These are the things that make life what it is. I only hope that the goods and bads and the ups and downs that come my way, are just a little less extreme and that I am able to manage it all a little calmer.

But really, all any of us can do for the year to come is wait and see how it will all turn out and enjoy and learn from it all as best as we can. I wish you all a very happy and healthy 2007.