Every year I write a New
Year post as a way to reflect on my year, and how things may or may have not
changed.
This post is in no way a
New Year’s resolutions post. I don't do those anymore because I don't think
change happens based on calendar days. I, personally believe change to be a
long, grueling process (but, hey, that's just me)!
I wrote one in 2013 and
2014 but for some reason I skipped 2015, so I have to make this year’s post a
little longer (maybe).
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| Art by Chiara Bautista |
So here goes the
condensed version of what has marked my 2015:
1. Anger, I
didn’t not start the year being angry from the 1st of January nor was I angry
all year long neither. But to understand how this year ‘went down’ I have to
explain this dark period. I spent most of the month of January at home with
plenty of time to be bored but also time to get informed on the situation of
Black people nowadays and how this had an effect in my life. Which brought up a
whole bunch of unmonitored, unwanted, unexpressed anger that had just sat on my
heart for a while. You see, growing up black in a place where the lighter you
were the better you were was the norm, I developed many (unexpressed)
frustrations about my skin, my hair, my nose and pretty much the way I looked.
Sigmund Freud said “unexpressed emotions will never die, they are buried alive
and will come forth later in uglier ways”; and when mine came out it was indeed
ugly. One day when I was slightly inebriated I lashed out at a friend of mine.
The reason? The said friend, I may or may not have had a secret-crush on at the time, made a comment about hair (about hair in general, but hair used to be quite a sensitive topic) that just
brought me back to all those thoughts & emotions of my childhood that
angered me. The poor kid was completely innocent and confused on why I went
from all smiley and jolly to breathing fire. God knows I have heard an
incalculable amount of stereotypical comments about black people, especially
being the only black person in my group of friend most of my life. But my reaction was
completely uncalled for and the next morning I felt absolutely foolish and
ashamed. Which brought me to really question the way I see myself, present
myself and deal with my emotions.
2. Being black,
this part is directly related to the previous one. I had to accept who I was,
how I looked, how I felt the struggle and stereotypes that came with it but
also the good things, the things that made me special. I have to understand
that to reaffirm who I was I didn’t need to live up to some idea of what
“black” was, my identity was not based on this. I kept repeating myself, “your
skin is chocolate, your hair are anti-gravitational you are weird, you’re a
paradox, your uniqueness will be your strength.” It seems like I had adopted
the right mind-set all I have to do is to start taking action towards becoming
the best version of myself. Which brings us to...
3. No excuses,
no this is not a motivational quote I stole from some Fitness magazine. It was
actually said by a friend of mine. She was talking to my brother and from the
small part I could grasp from their conversation (sitting on the opposite side
of the table), she said: “Anais always finds excuses…” She wasn't actually talking about my life but when I woke the next day it hit me like a ton
of bricks: I do always make excuses. Even with little things, I made excuses
for my life and I was holding myself back. You know how sometimes you don’t
realise something until you realise it, and then that’s all you can think
about? Well that’s what happened; and I learned that I needed to put an end to
the excuses, because the things that happened to us may make it harder for us
to reach our goals, but shouldn’t stop us from achieving greatness. (Oh yes,
I’m on a roll, brace yourselves! Cheesy motivational quotes are starting to
spill out).
4. Life
experiences; In 2015, I decided that rather than just focusing on the pile
of confusion that it is to study at the university level, I would start
actively cultivating some life experience. Everybody knows that nowadays
networking is everything. Actually it all started in 2014 after my Internship,
my hope of working in Event Management begun to feel closer than before. But in
2015 I was relentlessly screaming “How high?” every time an opportunity told me
to jump! And it felt so amazing to be up in the air whenever I made the jump.
The reasons why I wrote “life experiences” and not “CV building” is because
when I initially commenced to volunteer to join Organization teams (quick shout out to AIESEC) or signing
up for job fairs I never guessed for a second how it would affect me. I thought
I was just going to upgrade my CV turns out I upgraded myself too!
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| Pretty much. |
5. Appreciation;
We sometimes forget how unique and magical we are, especially when life
gets difficult and frustrating. We are hard on ourselves and feel responsible
for things in our lives that were probably not up to our control. I mean even
Beyonce doesn’t feel like Beyonce every day, fortunately for her she has
millions of fans worldwide and millions of albums sold to remind her that she
is, indeed, the Queen Bey. For the rest of us it is not that easy. In society
one’s value is often calculated according to you grades, whether or not you are
in a long term relationship, job “quality”, amount of money in the bank, how
much you resemble Kate Upton & J-Lo simultaneously… We are rarely applauded
for our smaller everyday successes. But when I was attending fairs&
conferences to ameliorate my CV I was also faced with a huge wave of
recognition and affection. Turns out cheering people up, being communicative,
open minded, always being helpful and in a good mood are things that make you a
better person (take that materialistic world!). And it truly feels amazing to
have people remind you every day that you are a marvelous combination of
millions of cells and your simple existence is not only special but necessary.
Your presence is making someone’s day better and reciprocally making the world
better, a freaking ripple effect! J And that, my friends, is one of the best
feelings in the world.
6. Giving back;
and I don’t mean in a philanthropic way, I’m not there yet. What I mean is
giving back some of that warm and fuzzy feeling I mentioned above and make
people feel good about themselves. I’m one of these people who, no matter how
insanely crazy I look (yes insanely crazy), I will always walk up to someone
and compliment them about something about them I like. It doesn’t really matter
who the other person is, on days I feel like it I will walk up to them and say
how their hair, outfit, dance moves, or whatever are great. I don’t expect
anything in return, I give my compliment and walk away. Sometimes I get weird
stares, sometimes I get a big smile and a thank you or a hug, other times I get
a friend. To be completely honest my dream job would be something where I could
spend the day making people feel better about themselves, which would truly be
the best thing in the world. I wrote in 2014 that one of my goals was to “Find
a passion”, well that is my passion (creating events is not too far on the
“making people happy” spectrum so yeah).
Just remember, Compliments save lives!
7. Wrong and
Right; We tend to only see the world in black or white, either we are good
person and do the right things or we are a bad person and do the wrong things.
This year I learn that even someone with the best intentions can do bad things
and that sometimes it is not the end of the world. What if you do something
wrong, but you don’t hurt anyone and you actually learn from it, is it still
considered as something wrong? Personally I think not, there is a grey area and
sometimes it is okay to cross that line. Like the lovely Derek Sheperd (Mc
Dreamy) said “I’m a human being. I make mistakes, I am flawed. We all are.” And
he was right (another great life lesson from Shonda!), let’s not be so hard on ourselves,
sometimes even good people do the wrong things and that is alright too.
8. Late/different
bloomers; As a person raised in a typical African family and having a
French education there is a lot of pressured put into respecting the order of
things; and for African households it goes a little bit like this: graduating
from high school, getting a bachelor degree, making a master (PhD is optional)
and getting a “good job”. So naturally I was feeling frustrated and slightly
like a failure at the idea of not yet being university graduate at the age of
23. Most of the people my age that I know graduated from their second degrees,
from Master or already have a job… But it is important to realise and accept
that not everyone has the same future and not everyone wants to. Some flowers
bloom at night and others bloom in winter, it doesn’t make them any less
beautiful. So yes, I am 23 and still living that struggle of being a student,
and it’s okay. We all go at our own pace.
9. Evolution;
often when looking at our lives we feel like we haven’t achieved anything at
all in the year. We may not even be closed to where we want to be in life, and
because that goal may seem so far away we fail to see how far we have come. So
yes, I haven’t even graduated but I have other things going on for me. 2015 was
a process, I’ve made mistakes, I’ve learned (a bit) and I’ve (kinda) grown.
But, much like this article, I am weird and unfinished. Each year isn't the
first page of 365 (this year 366) pages' book. Your life doesn't reset at
midnight - at best it's a new chapter. We are in no obligation to finish the
year with big meaningful ideas nor are we in any obligation to start the year
by making drastic changes in our lives neither. Maybe today you want to take a
nap and tomorrow you want to conquer the world and in three days you want to
start a good book or movie. That’s okay, take it slow, do the best you can.
All that being said,
Remember to be
full of amazingness and let your inner unicorn shine brighter than diamonds
and
....
Special thank you to Nicole G. for proof reading this because God knows the typo-Queen that I am wouldn't have made this article look so nice. You can also check out her blog here ---> Yours Truly
