I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same

Sometimes you don't notice things as you are going through them and it's only later that you look back and realize their significance. This was not the case for the past year, and especially the past 5 months. This year was a threshold year for me, and I've felt the weight of significance as things were transpiring even when I could not fully identify meanings that seemed at least partially hidden.

Perhaps the best summary of my past year would be Charles Dickens opening to A Tale of Two Cities, especially the first 12 words, which reads as follows:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

As the year draws to a close, I can say that it has been my hardest yet. But the experiences I've had have also resulted in personal growth, deeper relationships and more joy than I have ever felt before. I believe experiences aren't to be judged on ease or difficulty, but more so on what that experience leads us towards and into. Experiences can open us up to increased possibilities through their restructuring and reorganizing affect. Going back to Dewey, the continuity of an educative experience is such that it “arouses curiosity, strengthens initiative, and sets up desires and purposes that are sufficiently intense to carry a person over dead places in the future” (1938/1963, p.38). This says nothing about difficulty of the experience itself, only what that experience leads to. Educative experiences generate additional positive possibilities because of the way they are carried into the future through one’s attitude. Fishman and McCarthy (1998) summarized Dewey’s ideas on this topic by writing, “For Dewey, continuity is educationally effective when a sequence of experiences, despite occasional cul-de-sacs and detours, is so driven by deeply held purposes that it coheres, develops, and finds fulfillment." And while at times it's been a year of cul-de-sacs and detours--both personally and professionally--experiences have been sufficiently intense and meaningful to teach me both completely new things about myself and life as well as things I knew in abstract but not experiential form.

All of this is to say: pretty good year.