Beginning Anew

 

Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever. - Mark Twain

Mark Twain may have rightly noted the realities of the New Year, but perhaps not the purpose of having a resolution.  While many of us will quickly fall off our wagons to fight cholesterol, lower our weight, increase our exercise, or be friendlier, I prefer Edith Pierce's words that "we will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day."

These words give us the hope that we might take the challenge, the opportunity to make for both ourselves and the world a better place.  Like the birth of a new child, a new year is the beginning of possibilities.  The chance to find peace, a little something extra at work or at home, but it does not come without effort.

A New Year requires us to look deep into ourselves to start anew.  We must start the marathon of a year with those steps that are hardest - the first ones.  Those steps which require us to get off the couch and lace up the sneakers, the steps which require us to change the baby's dirty diaper before putting on the newest outfit, the steps which involve us practicing our skills prior to getting on the ambulance or fire engine, or even the steps that ask us to go out in 40 degree temperatures to begin throwing long toss for a Spring baseball season which is still at least ninety days and thirty-five degrees away.

These exercises in stretching our own minds and daily habits may be tough, but they are worth it.  They might cause us to pause in the face of our self created crisis, but we should not.  President Kennedy said crisis written in Chinese is made up of two elements.  One represents danger and the other opportunity.

This being the case, I wish everyone a happy, prosperous, and content New Year!  One filled with the pursuit of those opportunities awaiting all of us.

The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul. - G.K. Chesterton