A Thousand Tiny Celebrations

By Chris Mead | 07 January 2014 at 9:09

2013 is dead.

It had its chance and now it's over. Sure, it didn't have as many days to thrill us as 2012 did but it got 365 which is at least as many as any other year. So no excuses, 2013, how did you do?

Global poverty: still very much a thing

Climate change: worse if anything

Tax justice: Starbucks and Amazon just did a happy dance

Gender equality: it's glass ceilings a-go-go

Royal babies: okay, in fairness 2013, you did do better than most in this category

Finding out what the fox says: Apparently it says Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!

It's scary how fast these years flash by. For me, life has started to resemble one of those time-lapse photographs of a cityscape. Headlights smeared in florescent trails along empty streets, people there for an instant and then gone. Buildings growing like weeds, the sun racing across the sky - everything too jittery, too bright, too easily forgotten.

I can remember summer holidays that lasted for centuries.

But I digress.

The fact is that we start our years feeling that anything is possible, that we can make a real difference, both in our own lives and in the world in general, and too often we end them out-of-breath, disorientated and with a bad case of psychic whiplash (although this may just be the New Year's parties I go to).

It's the same for the Collective, we've done some amazing things in 2013: met a bunch of inspirational people, campaigned on tax and hunger, tried to live out our faith in action in as many ways as possible. But there's still so much to do and for every step forward we take, there's a danger the weight of the task ahead of us might make as falter or stop altogether.

But this is January, a New Year, a new chance - 2014 is big and shiny and untarnished by failure and disappointment. How then to take this feeling of potential and apply it to a year's worth of activity? I would argue we need to set achievable goals and, most importantly, celebrate our successes. To actually take a moment when things go well to acknowledge that fact and sit with it for a moment. Have a little smile to ourselves, maybe give someone a cheeky high five?

And if we do that I think we'll realise just how much we can do in a year and how all these little successes and minor wins add up to something bigger than any one of us.

Or to put it another way...

My wish for this year is that we fulfil our potential in a thousand tiny and celebrated ways. That we carry that potential through the year, that we live in moments that might otherwise whip past us.

Perhaps then we will look back and understand that we are agents of change, that the choices we make are powerful and that each of us transforms the world with every step we take.