So we've grown up with the mainstream Hollywood culture which taught us that love does have happy endings. Maybe in so many ways, it is a fabricated lie to escape our bleak reality. Maybe in so many ways, the lie stems from some truths on its own. But in every way, love exists. It's just that we've twisted it to a point where we have forgotten what it really is anymore.

We like to believe that what separates us from animals is the feeling of love, a word that means nothing until we give it every meaning. The word that defines us, what makes us human, that drives us. A single word that we rationalise in our creative works as a token of beauty and magnificence.

Yet love is still just a word. It cannot put food on the table. It cannot shelter us from the elements. It cannot be traded for money. It cannot cure the sick and neither does it prevent it. As much as we like to believe that love is everything, it still cannot guarantee us the promised happy ending. So much for love.

Because when we have lived enough. When we have seen enough. Love isn't everything. Love is not enough. Even if love makes the world go round and gives your relationship the meaning you wanted, it doesn't mean it's all your relationship needs. We're so brought up by our ideals and culture to believe that love is all that matters that we stop trying to make things work for ourselves.

So why shouldn't it be that we work through relationships for ourselves and not for love?

We can put food we both enjoy on the table. Protect each other from the elements of wind, rain and sun. We can earn money on our own for a future. Take care of the other when they are sick. Smack them at the back of the head if they don't take care of themselves. Even if there is no promise of a happy ending, at the very least, we know we can try to build one for ourselves. One we can enjoy together for as long as we can. After all, who wouldn't want a happily ever after?

At the end of the day, for me at least, love is just our way of saying "I really enjoy my life together with you for now". What comes in between is up to us to make out of it and build. After all, if we can give the simple word of love all the meaning in the world.

Why can't we give the relationship between two people, the same kind of meaning?

Continuing the tradition I started 2 years ago when I took up one of Lorelle's old Blogging Challenges on writing 50 things I've learnt within the past year, this year is no exception. Like I said in the previous post, it's hard to quantify, let alone qualify all that we've picked up over the year because there is just so much more to life, we end up forgetting more than we actually realise.

That's why I continue to write this milestone post every new year, not to list down the things we want or hope to do for the upcoming year, but to list down something far more important, the sense of actual accomplishment and how much we have grown throughout the past year. So here it is, the 50 things I've learnt throughout the year that was 2008.

1. That relationships can easily survive distance and time.
2. How good work will always be noticed regardless of the outcome.
3. How it pays to know the right people at the right time for the right reasons.
4. How there is no shame in asking for a big favour.
5. How to write a research proposal.
6. Why she trusts me so much in the relationship.
7. That I can live in an adult world of paychecks and bills.
8. That I made the right choice 3 years ago.
9. That good friends like the best lovers, are the people we never saw coming.
10. How to write a literature review.
11. Why I trust her so much in the relationship.
12. How research journal papers can be just as good a bedtime story as your bestselling novel.
13. How it feels like to have a kid brother to watch out for all the time.
14. How to be financially responsible for your own life.
15. How you can be dangerously frugal and still have all the essential things you need.
16. How there is no shame in falling in love with your best friend.
17. How you should always quadruple check your requests when you're responsible for ordering very expensive things with someone else's money.
18. That it is always to make big mistakes so that you know never to make it again.
19. That there is a step above being punctual and that's called being early.
20. That nothing really prepares a fresh graduate for a post graduate research project.
21. How you can always truly love more than one person for different reasons.
22. That you can't really trust people to do your job.
23. That you can really trust people to help you with your job.
24. That getting what you wished for starts with realising that you got what you wished.
25. That it is possible to not verbally talk to anyone for a month because there is no one there and you're actually too busy to socialise.
26. That I have friend who does more than says everything is going to be fine.
27. That there is no shame in having a friend love you back.
28. How persistence doesn't have take years to pay off.
29. How solving a problem isn't always the best thing to do.
30. Why I have a much more fulfilling life than a lot of the people I went to high school with.
31. That I don't need people to cheer me on to succeed, I just have to hang on to my reasons for doing it to reach that end of the line.
32. That I will forever be attracted to practical, strong willed, independent women.
33. That you should always take time to learn and use a bibliographical referencing program when your references are usually 8 pages long.
34. How to draw a comic.
35. That I do have humour people can appreciate.
36. The good things about my childhood I've forgotten years ago.
37. To be more patient with my family.
38. How far I'm willing to go to do stupid crazy things for the person I love.
39. How to write a thesis.
40. Why everyone was right in saying you should start writing a thesis 2 months before you hand it up.
41. Why you shouldn't always trust your automated spell checker.
42. That writing a thesis became easier once I realised it was a lot like blogging.
43. That I am capable of pursuing the rest of my life as someone in the academic field.
44. That I have blog stalkers in both good and bad forms.
45. That some things from the past never changes.
46. That some of the most amazing things in your life start from the little things we do and not the big things we decide to do.
47. That there is now nothing left for me to carry from the past.
48. That succeeding is another way of saying "What's next on the list?"
49. That I can begin to believe that there is a better future for me out there.
50. That you don't have to wait until you're old to realise that life for you starts, here and now, by your own hand.

The thing is, I could go on to another 50 more things that I have learnt throughout the course of 2008 because for me, that was the year I accomplished and succeeded in so much more than I thought I could. Then again, that is the point. Where resolutions of things we want to do have failed, it is in the moment of our actions in which we write into history, what we're truly capable of.

Where in the years past, I could only believe that I was walking down the right path, it was to be the final lesson of 2008 that showed me that whatever choices I made to be me, whatever hardship I endured to get here, does make it all worthwhile. Because at the end of the day, it is in what we learn about ourselves and about the world that defines our reasons for being here. And we need to know that, if not to survive what comes ahead, then to live out what it is we make.

So trust me, do this. Take your time to write down the 50 things you've learnt throughout the year. You just might learn more about yourself that you never knew you did…and that is never a bad thing at all.

I don't have to tell you to have a great year ahead because I don't know what lays in store for you. All I can do is to wish you the wisdom to freely choose what you would want to do.

To listen to your head first before you even dive in with your heart.

To always walk forward one step at a time no matter what happens

And lastly, if all else fails, to enjoy every moment of your life as if it was your last.

Because 365 days around a bright yellow star isn't long enough to show you what else you're missing out on. Nothing happens unless we make it so. So make your life a good one and then, and only then, your new year will be one worth being happy about.

How's that for a new year's wish?

It is the end of 2008, the end of so many things that has happened, to the world and in my life. So it's hard to quantify, let alone qualify the moments that have happened in my life throughout the year. If we at the very least learned something new every day, there would be 365 things to write about and that's only the stuff we can remember.

But there is one thing significant about 2008 that I will always relate to. It was the year I grew out of something. A year that was both its own hell and its own blessing. Its actual failure and its aspired success. It was the year I spent being alone and the year I realised I could be so much more because of it.

By nature, I like to be with people, not just for the company they are, but for the recognition they can give. A part that makes me feel "real" and valued as part of the society. It's true that being deprived of any positive acknowledgement as a child still drives me to reach as high as I can in the hopes that I can feel vindicated of my purpose and achievements, but the reality is that because of that very nature and then some, I will always be apart from people.

The very part that drives me to be the best I can be is a part that most people will take as reasons for staying away until they need me. It's a part of me that makes me difficult when dealing normal personal relationships. It's not that I can't maintain a professional relationship with people, it's that anything more than that and the social bonds begin to unravel from the sheer difference of opinion and personality between myself and the rest of the world.

What 2008 brought into the mix was the realisation that I could be happier without people around. I could do so much more without being bothered by people's constant preconceptions and misconceptions about my ethics, motives and actions. It's not to say I don't need people, because I still do. It's that I have to accept that this is who I am and this is what I do before making the best use of what I have. People might not always agree with me, but they aren't always right as well. Sometimes you have to learn to stop waiting for some sort of social validation and just commit to what you know are the better choices.

So I learned how to be independent on my own. Not in the terms of someone "living in a college dorm" independent, but someone who deals with the consequences of their own choices in the real world, where your mistakes can't be covered by someone else and the only person to fall back on is yourself. I learned that without people around, the only validation you really need is your own reasons for doing it and the only critic you have to rely on is your own common sense.

At the end of the day at an end of this year, the truth still remains that nothing has changed, yet at the same time, everything is different. It's true that socially, I am as devoid of close peers and camaraderies as I was at the beginning of the year, but realistically speaking, I don't think they were as important to my life as I wanted to believe it was. I succeeded in what I wanted to get against what I thought were bad odds, only to realise that solitary independence aren't bad odds.

You don't need people to cheer you on to succeed. You just need a reason to succeed. A reason to forget everything else in the world save for the one you're concentrating on right now. Because I learned this year, that's what mattered to me above all else, what I've always fought for will always matter to me.

And the best thing about it is, I smile a whole lot better succeeding in life than I do trying to get along with people. That's certainly worth the money shot alright.