A NEW YEAR
This evening I will stay awake to welcome in the new calendar year. I will not be part of a large gathering or some grand New Year's Eve party. I won't be with family or friends. My best friend and sweetheart, my wife, is working this evening. She is an Intensive Care Unit nurse at the local medical center. I will, instead, enjoy a quiet, pensive evening reflecting on the past year and contemplating, a little, the year to come. More importantly I will remember and employ some of life's lessons.
I've learned to keep life simple. Life itself is not complicated, we make it so. I will not live in the past, immersed in regret or lamentation. I've learned I can choose how I let the past affect me. I will not misuse the present by living in the future through worry, fear or stress. I choose to live in the present moment. After all, we can't really be anywhere else. I'll live my life in day tight compartments, living each day so as to experience it's fullness and enjoy it for the precious gift that it is. I will impact the world each day by committing at least one simple, random act of kindness. I will continually keep my mind filled with thoughts of that which I desire rather than thoughts of what which I wish to avoid. I will smile a little more, speak kind words more often, love genuinely, and begin and end each day by making a list of at least ten things for which I am grateful. Borrowing from a great father and spiritual leader in history, I will seek to live my life like a great river, continually running into the fountain of all that which is good, and also live like unto a great valley, firm, steadfast and immovable in doing that which I know is right!
May you each have the most phenomenal year of your life! HAPPY NEW YEAR!
