The _________ Years (Fill in the blank)

For many of us, life events define time. It's how we remember, how we connect events. Your "high school" and "college years." It's easy when you're young, you have those obvious benchmarks. After college, it gets a little more hard to define.

The years you worked at a certain place or the years your child was a baby. We define things by the hobbies that dominated our free time. We think of things in terms of relationships, who we were dating or who broke our hearts, when we got married or divorced. The year we lost a loved one. If you throw out a year, we search for ways to place that year in our memories.

Personally, I had the year I lost both grandfathers (1994), the year I lost my dad (1997), my art years (2000-2002), the years I was vegan (2002-2003), the year I got married and took that road trip to San Francisco (2003), the year I was a political activist (2004). We all have the "bad years," those we'd rather not talk about or aren't necessarily proud of. Just like we have the "good years," the ones we reminisce about and look back at fondly. Some are optimists and feel like their "best years" are yet to come, while others feel like those years have passed. And still some would rather just watch The Wonder Years and escape from their own years entirely.

When I look back at this year, I wonder how I will define it? Will I file it under the "divorce years?" I mean, it's accurate I suppose. But, deep down this description doesn't really fit this time in my life. It seems so simple, while what I'm experiencing seems so complex. To think in 10 or 20 years I may reflect on this time period and have it dominated by my divorce saddens me.

I'm done defining my life with loss. I already define several years with the loss of my father, my grandparents, friends -- I want these years to be listed as "The Happy Years." The years that I start defining my life not by what happens to me and around me, but what I choose to do.

I believe that the best years of my life are yet to come….and they just might be starting with this year.