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Journey into 2018

By Danié Gómez-Ortigoza

December 29, 2017

We’ve made it this far. No hurricane, earthquake, war or sickness prevented us to reach this moment and face a new year — so many people can’t say the same thing. You are here; for some reason you care for what I have to say, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

It’s quite intimate what we have going on here— the different lives we live:

On one side there’s our ‘real’ self: the one we wake up to every morning, surrounded by the raw and the mundane.

On the other side, there’s our digital self: an edited version of our lives, that has become a white canvas for creation, and reinvention.
My digital self is often an escape when reality becomes too real, and I need beauty to calm me down — it’s my pacifier.

Often, it’s been a torture — it was tough to realize during ‘Irma’, and the earthquake in Mexico, that the world kept going, despite whatever disaster we were going through, feeling a huge contrast between the tremendous support from my community, and the isolation of feeling misunderstood and extremely vulnerable.

I used to think that a New Year was the perfect solution to let go of the challenges of 2017. The year ahead won’t be much easier, as we are in the midst of religious, political, humanitarian, environmental and economic crisis. We will need to be stronger, and more united than we’ve ever been.

It would be childish of me to wish you a happy 2018 — I wish for you to live gratefully, and be aware of your worth: this capacity will give you the courage to fight whatever battles come your way,  let go of those that are not worth fighting for, and know the difference.

Learn to embrace the darkness in others, because you’ve got your own, and it’s the source of the goodness you bring to the world.

I wish for you to find joy along the way in your version of reality, and embrace the glimpses of happiness that life brings you. Balance is imperative.

Love. Love again. Love harder. And become the narrator of your journey rather than a puppet of someone else’s.

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