Reflection and Resolution
Wow, a new year. We were just talking on New Year’s Eve about how completely arbitrary January 1 is. When you wake up, it is unarguably a new day. This year, New Year’s Eve was a full moon, so we were also starting a new cycle of waning and waxing moon phases. And it’s also clearly true that the Earth rotates about the sun once every 365 (and a quarter) days. But our calendar is pretty arbitrary. Nevertheless, it gives us a good opportunity for reflection and resolution.
So here’s my reflection on the last year: It was a good year. The boys are older, healthy and happy. We are older, healthy and happy. Mom and Dad are older, healthy and happy. We love where we live and what we do here. We’re doing a decent job of living up to our ideals. I’m a better, and more content, person than I was one year ago today. I wouldn’t trade this life.
And here’s my resolution for the year to come: to meet each day and each situation with the phrase: “there is no place I’d rather be right now than right here where I am.” That’s it. This moment is the culmination of my life, the end result of millions upon millions of choices and chance events. The odds of my being right here, right now are vanishingly small, yet here I am. This is fact, and the terms “good” or “ill” don’t apply. It simply is, and my choices are to embrace it or fight it. While there’s something a little bit sweet, and perhaps even a little bit noble, about fighting the truth sometimes, in the end you always lose. So I will embrace it. I will stand facing it, with my eyes open and my arms outstretched. I’ll do my best to be ready for it, but if I’m not I’ll at least be decisive and I will act. I will breathe, I will move, I will try. I will smile when I can and cry when I must, but I will not mope, whine, or wish for what is not. This is the life I have chosen and everything counts. And besides, it’s REALLY, REALLY GOOD!
I’ll end here with a somewhat lengthy, but beautiful, quote from Gottfried von Strassburg (German middle-ages poet, famous — in certain circles – for his work Tristan): “I have undertaken a labor, a labor out of love for the world and to comfort noble hearts: those that I hold dear, and the world to which my heart goes out. Not the common world do I mean, of those who (as I have heard) cannot bear grief and desire but to bathe in bliss. (May God then let them dwell in bliss!) Their world and manner of life my tale does not regard: its life and mine lie apart. Another world do I hold in mind, which bears together in one heart its bitter sweetness and its dear grief, its heart’s delight and its pain of longing, dear life and sorrowful death, dear death and sorrowful life. In this world let me have my world, to be damned with it, or to be saved.”
Life is good.