I was recently glancing through some books in our office and found a travel journal I’d given my husband some years ago. On each page was a rectangle, embellished with an elegant boarder, in which were written the words ‘Highlight of the day’.

I thought for a moment. What was the highlight of my day?

During the festive season where love, joy and peace are featured, it would seem such a simple thing to identify a highlight in each day. Yet, often there are an awful lot of other, less pleasant sentiments that can bombard us during this time. We seem to so easily forget the point of Christmas – remembering the outpouring of grace and love with the birth of a Saviour. And instead of this translating into the physical exchange of gifts and sharing of love and joy with our fellow man, we can find ourselves exhausted, upset, guilty for overspending and/or overindulging and feeling nothing remotely comparable to loving or joyous.

What if we were to snapshot each day?

What would be at the centre of our thoughts, even in the midst of frantic doing? Would we remember ridiculous queues in shopping centres? The complaints of disgruntled gift recipients? Sugar-hyped, overtired children? An overinflated credit card debt?

How easy it could be to let our minds (and days) be driven by the more trying elements of life. Could this simple principle – highlighting a feature of each day – be a way of setting the tone of our world? Perhaps if we, on a daily basis, were looking for the uplifting moments of life, we could be less inclined to be sideswiped by an overwhelming negative. Granted, bad things happen, but so do good things. Everyday. What a great way to remind ourselves of those positives.

What will you write as your highlight for today?

Since my last blog our city has become draped in a haze of purple! Parks are blanketed with lavender. Streets are lined with this same hue. The jacarandas are in bloom.

Jacarandas are embedded in my earliest memories. As a small child I used to pick the blossoms off the ground, thinking that they looked just like a tiny bird with delicate purple wings. Later, I used to play under the shade of the jacarandas that graced our school grounds. Then, as a university undergrad, my friends and I would tease each other about how it was too late to study for final exams if the jacarandas were in bloom.

Now I look across my purple patchwork city and know that Christmas is near and the year is drawing to close. And guess what? Next year at the same time these flowers will come, just the same. The jacarandas are a measure of the season.

Life can be measured in this way. Years come and go, but just like the jacarandas, the seasons come again. Opportunity is a little like that.

Have you ever felt you’ve missed it – blown a chance beyond repair?

The scale of such ‘blowings’ can span the mundane to the extraordinary. Yet, just like the purple canopy that colours my city right now, opportunities will return.

Impossible? Granted, new opportunities may not look quite the same as the old; they may not have the same outcomes as previous offerings, but they will come. In light of this, opportunities should not be treated with contempt. Each holds its own potential. Yet, just as life moves forward, so must we.

There’s no point keeping jacaranda blossoms from a previous season. They grow brown and shrivelled; a fragile shell of what they once were. Just the same, if we miss an opportunity and stay in that moment, beating ourselves up about it time and again, we too will grow colourless and fragile. We may even be less inclined to grasp those future opportunities – or even recognise them when they come.

There’s no denying that missing some opportunities can bring deep pain, even an irreplaceable loss, but if you feel like you’ve stopped at such a place, let yourself feel the warm breeze of spring and the newness of life it represents. In time, the beautiful colours of the seasons will fill your world and the purple of the jacarandas will eventually hail the nearing of a New Year – a fresh start for new dreams and new opportunities.