Which way is your deck chair facing?

I came across this little comic while cleaning out paper piled up over the past year. Little bits and pieces shoved in file folders, hence this comic, told the small story of what has transpired in 2018. Some of these pieces of paper showed where my “deck” chair was pointed. Every year I have blogged, I always look back on what happened in the year (What A Year It Has Been) and thought about the lesson or experiences I have encountered. Yet where was my deck chair facing? Was it facing backward instead of forwards?

I remember last year as I was riding the ferry all over the Puget Sound, I always found myself at the back of the boat as the ferry pulled away saying goodbye, but as the boat headed toward the new destination, it was in the front ready to greet whatever was to come once I stepped off the boat. Then there were times I was at the front of the boat looking at the horizon the whole time. The horizon the future, the port left the past.

The song Auld Lang Syne comes to mind around New Year’s Eve.

Should Old Acquaintance be forgot,
and never thought upon;
The flames of Love extinguished,
and fully past and gone:
Is thy sweet Heart now grown so cold,
that loving Breast of thine;
That thou canst never once reflect
On old long syne.

The song is often used as symbolism to endings/new beginnings. New Year means new beginnings, hope for the future, hope for an answer long overdue, or a long waited for a goodbye to the past. Saying goodbye to the past year in the Scottish tradition reminds us to not have the past keep holding us back. Make a decision which way you want to greet the new year.

Yet the wax eloquent of Lucy’s statement to Charlie Brown hits into a deep recess of those of us who find ourselves standing one foot in the past and another foot in the future. You could say our deck chair is neither in one direction nor our cruise ship out of port.

The deck chair facing which direction indicates where you want to go in life. Where you want to go this year. Facing the bow towards the future? Facing the stern towards the past? Or does the chair face in another direction? Is the new year a new beginning or is it an ending?  The deck chair is the decision we all must make about the new year ahead of us.

On the cruise ship of life, pull up a deck chair and decided in 2019 which way your deck chair is going to be facing. Where it is facing is where your year is going to go.