Celebrate Starting Over …

Start today. And if you mess up, start again before tomorrow. You get to try again until you get it just right; you get to learn until you know it all. Then, I suppose you get to die happy or live in nirvana or be transported into the heavens.

Much of life is about starting over. It’s about falling down and learning from it, getting up and starting again. And if that doesn’t sound like fun to you, just watch a little baby do it. Better yet, let the baby wrap his little fingers around yours and help him learn to walk.

Look into his twinkling eyes and see if you don’t get a new perspective on resilience — joy in the stumbling and peace in the falling. There might be some cries and screams, but they won’t keep him down. With a little coaxing, I bet you can turn the cries into smiles and laughter, and find yourself gleeful.

Why not encourage yourself? Believe in yourself? Show kindness and understanding to yourself?

If you don’t do that, chances are you don’t feel like showing other adults kindness, either. But that’s just because you lost sight of the baby, or the goodness, in you and in them. The hope is still in there; the joy and the peace are still in there.

Yes, you have grown-up problems, and you’ve taken some tough falls. Like me, you’ve probably curled up and sobbed what felt like hopeless sobs. And maybe you’ve filed away enough lousy memories to make any person angry and bitter — any person who wanted to be, that is.

After you’ve aired all of your grievances, the hard knocks and the heartaches, with all the should-haves and if-onlys, ask yourself this question: Do you want to be happy anyway?

All you really have is today. You can’t go back and do yesterday differently. You can learn from it, though, enough to do today differently.

You can start again. You can celebrate today, and tomorrow, and the day after.

You can keep starting over until it feels like you … and you know exactly what you’re celebrating.