The Long Run

This year is slowly, but surely, coming to an end, 2012, wow, what a year!!! Thou cannot say that about your year? Why? Take another look around, what has 2012 given you, what has it done to you, what has it made you become? A friend told me about how messy and awful 2012 was for her, and I’m pretty damn sure she is not the only one to perceive it that way; but give it another shot, take another look around, take a minute for an in-depth retrospect, for a holistic review—open your eyes.

When I specialized on international economics there was one phrase, one concept I was always fascinated with: the long run—not in terms of an approach regarding capital markets or modern economies, but by the concept itself. The long run in our life. Is not 2012 a tiny part of our whole life? What is one year compared to 78.2 (life expectancy in the United States), in accordance to that 2012 is approximately 1.28% of our God-given time on planet earth. So don’t be discouraged, if 2012 was not as good as expected. If this year was not your year, see it as a tiny little piece to the puzzle, a tiny little part of the whole full-on beautiful picture(s) we call our lives.

Don’t see this year as a year itself, widen, spread, endow, enlarge your perspective; see it within the whole context, within your whole life, and furthermore try to embed it in 78 years of greatness, entrench it in 78 years you have been given to walk this planet, to live, to love, to breathe. Open your eyes for the long run, what has this year done for you, what’s it meant for you in the long run? Retrospect truely, retrospect wisely. Are you not at a far more advanced point of view than you were a year ago? Have thou not gained anything, have thou not gained a lot, actually? Are you not at a "different level of wisdom, different level of understanding?" (Ray Lewis) This year has brought you to a point you never saw coming, things happened you had no clue about a year ago. Even if not everything worked out according to plan, you can still consider yourself lucky for all the experiences you were able to make. And experiencing things you never expected, not a year ago, shall encourage you to keep driving, keep going on, keep making it through this world, progressing within your spirit, and not least your life.

See the whole picture, see things in the long run, maybe this was a transition period, a transition year; maybe you had to leave a height of your life and are still on a saddlepath to another higher height (to keep reference to economic terminology)...then of course you think this year may have been awful, weird, not promising, but if you see it in the long run, does that year not make sense? Let me tell you something: it will make sense. At some point, maybe in a month, a year, a decade you will look back at 2012 with a smile on your face saying "now I see, why 2012 was the way it was, now it makes sense in the whole context of my life"; see it like that, my beloved readers, and ride with it.

The English social reformer John Ruskin once said: "The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it." If 2012 was toil, pain, blood, sweat, and tears—accept, respect, and acknowledge what it made you become: the wise and experienced person you now are!