December.

It's been a beautiful month, and I can't think of a more beautiful way to end 2016. It's been a tough year for me, to be honest, and challenging in a queerly ungraceful way, when things just go wrong everyday and you're resisting the temptation to sulk and feel bad about it, and think of all the other blessings you've got, but to no avail. 2016 was a year of resistance, and a lesson to learn in between.

I learned that anxiety and fear usually lead nowhere, and sometimes you've got to be strong and courageous enough to resist the fear and stand up to it. Sometimes the better option is to just remain feebly hopeful and trustful to the earthly balance and patiently wait to see how things work out in the end, because they do, all the time. Maybe the worst thing about the wait is that we are biased beings, and you cannot just separate your emotions and block out those nudging moments of disbelief and desperation. But I learned to accept them instead, and just live through those awful feelings for a day, a month, and in my case, a whole year. But I know that next year, I'll be more wise, and I'll have far more scars that will have the opportunity to heal, and healing is a beautiful process, because it's a collaborative work of wonders, because you're made anew, instead of being born new all of a sudden. You get to witness the splendour of recovery as you reach the end of it.

I'm really hopeful about 2017. Even though things don't seem to get any better, but everything changes, and everything could change, even for me. The torpidity and still environment I've lived in for a couple of years has intoxicated me a little, but I know that it's only a lesson I must learn; to stop worrying about the locus of control that does not reside within me. I hope things will shift this year, and that the buckles that have tightened up my freedom will perish away along with that shift. Things can't just stay the same, can they?

I'm full of trust these days. I trust God, myself and time. I'm faithful and aware that miracles can happen, and all I need to do next year is to be more open to omens and the messages that are always there to transform my life. Maybe I have to change first, to allow my life to transfigure. Maybe it's my lens that I need to change and reform in order to uncover the freedom that is already there.

I wish all of you a merry 2017, and I hope the world balances itself out, like it always does. And I hope everyone cold and starving out there have the faith to keep on living, and to open up the eyes that do not need the conventional energy to see, I hope they all have the vision that extends beyond these finite moments, and to attain bliss and happiness in whatever travail that bounds their lives.

Ameen.