Celebrating New Beginnings...

No matter how small they may seem.

I remember standing on a stool with my childhood best friend and singing my gut out with a spatula in my right hand, disguised as a microphone.

“Hush! Now! I see the light in the sky!”

If there was any artist who made me love music as a kid, it had to be Céline Dion. There was something about the songs she sang that got me so elated yet so calm every time. It was always a mixture of euphoria and melancholy all in one.

The song, “A New Day Has Come” by Céline Dion was probably the very first song I knew word for word, aside from my nursery school rhymes of course:) This song was released in 2004 and simply put, the song made my childhood.

Fast forward to many years later, I came across the movie love again where Céline Dion featured and a handful of her classics were played during the course of the movie. I just couldn't brush away the nostalgia that slowly engulfed me.

The main theme of the song? Embracing new beginnings. Let's talk briefly about this. Embracing new beginnings is an experience filled with excitement, hope and transformation. A chance to start fresh, leaving the past behind.

As easy as it may sound, starting afresh may not always seem fun because at that moment, we have to make a conscious decision to let go of the vintage and embrace the future. Again, this never seems easy at first but the truth remains that it gets easier. It always does.

Personally, embracing change wasn't something I particularly liked doing because that entailed me going out of my comfort zone and that idea was just cruddy. Why leave a zone I worked so hard to build and seemingly find solace in? Just to embrace something I know nothing of? Uncertainty always kicked in.

So many opportunities presented themselves and I always turned them down. These were opportunities that could have changed my life and the lives of others for the better but hey, my comfort zone just felt too cosy.

Take for instance the time when I was called upon to undergo an official training to become a proper moderator and master of ceremonies. I say official because I had already gone through an unofficial training and once I carried out the official training, I was definitely going to be put in the spotlight every single time. I met all the criteria for the training but I just couldn't get myself to train. I evaded till the training was concluded and honestly, I didn't feel bad about missing the training at the time.

A few months after the training, I attended an event in an entirely different city from mine and the two day event went smoothly on the first day but the moderator took ill on the second day and there was no one to replace him; at least no officially trained personnel. A group of people who assumed that I was a good moderator and as such I must have undergone the official training came up to me and asked me to fill in for the ill moderator. I was ready to do so but the deal breaker was the fact that I hadn't undergone the training and they weren't willing to break protocol.

I could see the pain and frustration in their eyes when it dawned on them that the event had run with no moderator at all. This pain was a mutual one. At that moment, I could have easily stepped in to serve but I just returned to my seat and for the rest of the day, I kept blaming myself for how things turned out.

Once I returned to my city, I embraced the change I was so afraid of. I went through the training, became official and I have been serving ever since then. The joy that comes with serving is quite immeasurable as it's something I love to do.

We fail to embrace change due to various reasons, one of them being fear of the unknown just like in my case but in the end, I turned out to relish the unknown I was so afraid of. One principle I work with is “just try and if it doesn't work out, change your method of approach and try again” this is applied when I'm certain about a decision.

The timeless masterpiece, A New Day Has Come, throws more light on embracing new beginnings and the immense joy it can bring. As such, if you're having doubts or second thoughts about a decision, just go for it and if it doesn't work out, have no regrets.

^{Images used belong to me and were taken with my mobile device except stated otherwise.}

Liebe🤍