One of the most productive things that I’ve done as 2013 draws to a close, is to review all of my accomplishments and prepare for the coming year. And yet, even as I do this, I wonder at those things that have been the cause of my greatest setbacks. I remember those things which got continuously pushed into the next month. I remember those days when it felt like a great effort to simply smile. I remember feeling incredibly frustrated and overwhelmed, and discouraged.  I remember at one time being terrified that I would be standing behind the desk of the fitness club for the rest of my life, answering calls and shifting uncomfortably as members paid off a $20 service charge for a missed payment.

But then I also remember all of my successes: the roles that I got to play, the teachers with whom I got to study, and the people who I had the good fortune of meeting.

I remember standing at the finish line of the lululemon half marathon, and watching a mother scoop up her child from the line of observers, and finish the race with him in her arms.

I remember reading this on my little brother’s (whose actually not so little anymore) Facebook page: “A man drops his wallet on the packed bus as he was getting off today, another man notices this and asks the bus driver to pull over the bus so he can sprint down the street and return the wallet to its owner. When he reruns back to the bus everybody applauds him and it was a beautiful public transit moment. If that isn’t a Canadian moment, I don’t know what is.”

I remember watching someone sneak a blueberry from the top of basket on display outside of a supermarket, and immediately hunch their shoulders in guilt.

I have also not forgotten the bus driver who handed a bag brimming with groceries out her window to a homeless man, and I have not forgotten the look on his face as he clutched the food to his chest as he walked away.

I remember all of these things. And then, as the year draws to a close, I have the good fortune to read this quote from a letter that Sylvia Plath wrote home to her mother at around the age of 23:

“Gone is the simple college cycle of winning prizes, and here is the more complex, less clear-cut arena of life, where there is no single definite aim, but a complex degree of aims, with no prizes to tell you you’ve done well. Only the sudden flashes of joy that come when you commune deeply with another person, or see a particularly golden mist at sunrise, or recognize on paper a crystal expression of a thought that you never expected to write.”

And so, as 2013 draws to a close I am reminded that life must be spontaneous, and that it is important, if not necessary, to break the rules every once and awhile. I’m reminded that although we hear mainly of the bad, there is actually a lot of good in the world. I suddenly acknowledge how fantastic it is that I am able to publish my opinions and thoughts at the push of a button, and that people actually read them.

With 2014 only a few sleeps away I remind myself (again with the words of Sylvia Plath) to “swing away from the grey-clad, basically-dressed, brown-haired, clock-regulated, responsible, salad-eating, water-drinking, bed-going, economical, practical girl that I’ve become.”

So as we all move into 2014, let’s promise to be easier on ourselves, to be more observant of the extraordinary acts which occur around us every day, and to take risks when it comes to those things which mean the most to us. Let’s promise ourselves to live with passion and to live in suspense of what might come next.