Dawn another year,
Open it aright;
Thou shalt have no fear
In its fading light.
—Joseph Krauskopf
I read this quote in a meditation book a couple days ago and it kind of stuck with me. Not the exact wording, of course—I mean the overall spirit. After all, the last couple years have been a little difficult for the world, haven’t they?
New Year’s is a tricky thing. On one hand, we all know it’s just another day. There’s no special magic to December 31st or January 1st, for that matter. Like hours and minutes, the dates we’ve adopted on our calendar only mean something because we assign meaning to them.
Still, it’s tempting to view them as so many others do: as opportunities for growth, change, improvement…you know how it is. New Year’s resolutions come and go (mostly go), and people review their previous year with pride or chagrin.
I’m certainly not immune: this past year I walked an average of 2.4 miles per day and lost 15 pounds. I feel good about that. On the other hand, work commitments prevented me from making as much progress on my Work-in-Progress, Jihad Insurance, as I’d planned. So there’s that.
Resolve Not to Resolve
This year I have absolutely no resolutions. My modest improvement from 2.2 miles per day to 2.4 MPD came about organically, and anything I do better this year will have to come about the same way.
In fact, my wife and I have been working our heinies off, and that will likely continue. We built a house for her parents last year, no doubt one of the biggest accomplishments of our lives.
This year promises no rest for the weary, however. Both of us have work commitments that continue to look heavy for the foreseeable future, and that’s not a bad thing. Like I told a friend recently, a job is not a basic right; we’re lucky to have the work.
As we stumble toward what so many of us hope is the end of this long, dark pandemic, we turn toward the open door of a new year. We hope it’s better than last year, or the year before. And we’ll do what we can to make it so.
