Of men and toilet seats

Chris Terblanche – The bathroom in the main bedroom of our house has a rather peculiarly shaped toilet.  The bowl is elongated and oval in shape, as if it was designed for two people to sit on it at the same time; like two people on a motorcycle. Unali and I have never tried that though, and I cannot imagine a set of circumstances where one would, but there it is. As luck would have it, shortly after we moved in, the plastic seat broke. I spent hours in bathroom stores and hardware stores looking for a seat that would fit, but none existed. It appears as if the idea of two people going at the same time never really caught on. Since the toilet is built into the floor and the floor is tiled, replacing it meant that we would have to retile the bathroom. There is only one thing that I hate more than home improvements and redoing bathrooms, and that is… no actually, there is nothing that I hate more. So we decided to live with the long toilet and to sit directly on the ceramic bowl. 

I was raised to be a real man. This included not showing emotion, participating in contact sports and, of course, standing up when peeing. I would never ever pee sitting down, because that is what girls did. Also I was afraid. I am pretty sure that I was told as a boy that a lizard with very sharp teeth lived in the bowl, just waiting to bite it off if a boy ever dared to sit down for anything other than a number two. The problem with this seatless bowl now is of course that, as a real man, my aim is not very specific. It never had to be. But it would be very rude and very selfish of me to leave even a tiny little drop on the bowl, because Unali is, after all, a girl. It is not too much hassle to clean the bowl of course, but there are those sessions in the middle of the night when one does not switch on the lights or even open your eyes. There was a genuine possibility that I would forget to wipe or that I would miss a spot. So I started sitting down…

Nothing happened. It has been weeks now and I have not developed a sudden interest in shopping, my beard has not stopped growing and I have not felt any desire to try on any of Unali’s clothes. And my junk is still intact. I soon realised that being a man had nothing to do with bathroom behaviour. It had everything to do with why I chose to do it. I did it for the woman I love. The true measure of a man is how he treats those he loves and, to sit down for Unali’s comfort, is a ridiculously small sacrifice to make bearing in mind what she does for those she loves. I am eternally grateful to be counted among them. She has also taught me how to show emotion and that it is okay to be too old for contact sports. She has made me a more real man than I had ever been before.

Now, every time I sit down on that cold ceramic bowl, I am reminded what she means to me; and it makes me grateful and content. But I remain nervous of that lizard…

A storm in a tea cup and other addictions

Sonja van Wyk – I’m always over-analysing stuff, and perhaps it is a good thing under the right circumstances but, I suppose, it’s probably more irritating than anything else for those close to me. For example, if I’m at a casual get-together and somebody makes casual chit chat about the weather, I’d consider the weather patterns of the past week, mentally sift through the newspaper articles that I’ve read, and my reply would be an analysis of the expected weather patterns as predicted by some meteorologist. Instead of saying, “Yes, it has unusually been hot” I bring up El Nino and climate warming. A bit of conversation killer.

I’m mentioning this little tidbit while I’m reflecting on how we are sometimes addicted to stuff other than the normal substances, like cigarettes and alcohol. I’m probably addicted to analysing stuff to the point that it becomes almost dysfunctional – in conversations, and in life where it sometimes leads to analysis-paralysis.

And then there are people that are addicted to making a drama out of everything. There are probably a lot of reasons for this, or perhaps it’s simply that sometimes life is boring or unsatisfying – which is why we as humans like movies, tv and  stories so much; we can relieve that boredom and experience that emotional thrill vicariously. But the real-life drama addicts like to create that kind of drama in their own lives. They have a need to blow up everything way out of proportion to get their fix.

Good for them, I say, except like all good dramas it requires other players to join the production. The drama addict will do anything to suck others into this production – skillfully stirring, emotionally manipulating, outright confrontations, sulking… – and there we go. Raise the curtains.

It’s difficult to stay out of it if you’re targeted as being part of the production. Invariably there is some emotional manipulation – you don’t care enough, you don’t love me enough, you think you’re better than me…. Sometimes not joining the drama production is more of an issue than the actual script provided and we just say, ah what the hell, and join in. And so one person’s need for drama creates a storm in a tea cup.

One thing I know for sure is that if and when I drown I wouldn’t want it to be in a tea cup.

Do we know what we want, though?

Sonja van Wyk –   So, in my stillness (my nice word for a dead end), and trying to be patient, I’m forced to dig a little deeper. I’m quite aware that one of the main reasons that we don’t get to create an awesome life is because a) we don’t know what we want and b) we change our minds all the time.

So, if I’m to create something new in my life, should it be based on what I want, or based on what I should want? There are a lot of other people’s expectations and needs out there. Family, spouses, children, job expectations, money needs… We can even go as far as to add society’s expectations, church laws, government regulations…. That’s a shitload of “other” who has the potential to impose demands and expectations on my life.

So where does Little Me fit in? Whatever I do, it is going to affect someone else, no doubt about it. If I’m going to take everybody else into consideration and if they have objections to what I might want, I’m not going anywhere, that’s for sure. Unless I ignore it. Not the easiest thing to do.

What I do know from past experience is that even if we suppress what we really want, and we might do it for a long time, it’s not going away. The thoughts simply will not leave us, it will simply become more powerful and even painful if we don’t express it or act on it. I’ve read that some psychologist, can’t remember his name, said that that we only really change when the pain of staying the same is worse than the pain necessary to change. Same thing.

But what if we truly don’t know what we want?

 Before I continue, I would just like to say that I’m somewhat sceptical about the notion that we all have some Grand Purpose for our lives. Sure, we want our lives to mean something, to make some contribution to Life. But it may not necessarily be a Thing. Having said that, if you have a clear sense of purpose go for it, work with it, and most of all enjoy it. But let’s remove this terrible pressure that comes with the idea that our lives should have a Purpose, which we really interpret to mean that we should do something with our lives.

Sometimes it is not about doing, but about being. A successful (read: loving, secure, mature) human being is as important, if not more, as a list of accomplishments. It certainly takes as much effort and growth to get there. Sometimes I think a lot of our “doing’ inclinations serve as a means to get to the successful “being” part.

Living a life, and experiencing everything that life has to offer is what it is really all about. It’s not about a goal –it’s the bits in between going from one life event to another. The parts where we get to choose what we like and what we want and which is where our powers to create kick in. Those are the parts we struggle with the most.

Memento mori

Helen Riding  –

pure white bud promise
blood red rose: love, life giver
fades to black within

The Youth

“Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.”
Morning Song, Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

“Gather ye rose-buds while ye may;
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.”
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

The countdown starts from the moment of our conception, yet it often takes many years for us to come to terms with our mortality.

My father died when I was very young and I have no conscious memory of him or his death. I remember being told that the sticky, milky sap of the frangipani tree in our garden was poisonous, and thinking that must have been what killed him. His actual cause of death was lung cancer. He smoked and worked in a paint factory, and that was what killed him.

When I left my boyfriend in my early twenties, he tried to take my life, then threatened to take his own life and kept his promise a few months later. I was traumatized, but still I did not get it.

A brush with cancer at the age of 24 did not even do the trick. I just felt really old. It was only when my mother died two years later that it hit me. I needed to understand where she went and what we were all doing here. But as I was already on the work treadmill that only speeds up and never slows down, such concerns eventually took a back seat in my daily life.

The Provider

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”
The World is Too Much With Us, William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

“Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.”
If I Could Tell You, Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

Three years ago at the age of 42, I quit my professional career to save my life. I was neither being brave nor foolish, as suggested by some people from whom I have now distanced myself. In the end it came down to survival. I wrestled with The Devil, my ego attachment to money and my fear of poverty, for several months before I realized that all I really wanted was to be happy. I had a little help from my body making the decision. I knew I had no choice when I lost my appetite and was unable to sleep because I was stressed beyond my limits. I was not prepared to be a martyr on the corporate altar.

One of the reasons I am writing this is because I am still encountering resistance to my decision to leave the workforce and am so tired of the prevailing obsession with making money. People make all sorts of suggestions to me based on the assumption that money is the only thing worth working for, or living for. Since I quit my job, I have tried various types of contract work and have come to the realization that it doesn’t matter who you work for, they all demand their pound of flesh and then some. I came to resent the 24×7 sense of entitlement that comes with being paid a regular fee for a service. I may as well have stayed in my job, which would have killed me.

Another reason I am writing this is because I know some people who are struggling with the same issues that I have struggled with, and may be able to give them some healthy food for thought (although I had at least ten minds about baring my soul).

I am not suggesting that anyone else rush off and quit their job after reading this. This is my story, and I can afford not to worry about money for a while. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like money and the things it can buy, it simply means that it is not the most important thing in my life right now. My freedom is priceless.

“For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;”
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)

“But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.”
As I Walked Out One Evening, Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1048-1131),
as translated by Edward Purcell Fitzgerald (1809-1883)

“What a folly to dread the thought of throwing away life at once, and yet have no regard to throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal.”
John Howe (1630-1705)

Not only was I stressed out of my mind, I was also bored to tears and some parts of my brain had literally stagnated and died. Every morning as I walked into the office I would say to myself “This is not my life. This cannot be my life.”. My life was passing me by, and I was not happy.

And even outside the office, my life was not my own.

If you have the disease to please, give yourself permission to say No to others and Yes to yourself. What other people think of you is not nearly as important as what you think of yourself and when you give someone back their burdens, you make them stronger.

I am not saying this is easy. Last year on my 45th birthday, I realized I was still allowing other people to insidiously steal my energy and my happiness, by controlling me and bombarding me with negativity. It made me very angry. It is a very difficult cycle to break and I honestly don’t know how to do it without severing ties, thus disengaging from the unhealthy perpetual drama triangle. I just know that I don’t want to spend the time I have left this way. It is probably the hardest lesson I have to learn in this lifetime, i.e. how to maintain relationships without handing over my own personal power.

Imagine a jar of, say, 50 marbles and that each marble represents a year, month, week or day left of your life. (We cannot be sure which measure applies. While my grandparents had relatively long lives, my father died at the age of 49 and my mother died at the age of 60.) Spend your marbles wisely.

 “‘The only way to have more time,’ says Father Lacouture, ‘is to sow time.’ In other words, to throw it away. Just as one throws wheat into the ground to get more wheat. It must have seemed madness to throw that first wheat away but more wheat sprang up a hundredfold. So each day, start out by saying, there is plenty of time. And so to discard time, to throw it to the winds, to disregard all the work there is to do, and go sit in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament for an hour, to divest oneself of these accursed occupations all in order to reap time, for those things which are necessary.”
By Little and By Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day (1897-1980)

Nature abhors a vacuum, so the cauldron of your life will always be full. You need to make sure that it is full of the things you want in it. I see a vicious cycle in the corporate world of people demanding more money and employers demanding more flesh in return. Spending all your waking hours and energy chasing more money to buy more things that you don’t really need will not help you to fulfil all your needs. Once you have taken care of your basic needs such as food, health care, shelter and safety, be mindful of your higher order needs such as loving relationships, creativity, mental stimulation and spirituality.

The Sage

“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”
The Lake Isle of Innisfree, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Since I left my job among other things I have researched my family tree to the best of my ability and learned a new language (Italian). The mental stimulation has helped to revive the parts of my brain that had been neglected for so many years.

I continued my studies in metaphysics that I had started while I was still working. I also studied various divination systems, which are effectively symbolic languages for communicating with the universal mind.

I avoided religion most of my adult life, having more or less abandoned it as soon as I was old enough to, until I found myself interested in Paganism earlier this year. The nature-based spirituality without religious dogma appeals to me, and it has literally opened up a whole new world of living and learning for me.

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

“Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. ‘Do you wish to buy any baskets?’ he asked. ‘No, we do not want any,’ was the reply. ‘What!’ exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, ‘do you mean to starve us?’ Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off – that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed – he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man’s to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other’s while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one’s while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.”
Walden, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

I am not an arts and crafts person, but I have always enjoyed writing and blogging gives me great pleasure. I have a ton of books waiting patiently for me to read them, and I expect that they will give me plenty of ideas on what to write about. I haven’t thought further ahead than that yet, and for once in my life I am simply enjoying each moment.

As Thoreau is quoted as saying, when it’s our time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived. These are the days of our lives.

“When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.”
Native American wisdom

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
The Summer Day, Mary Oliver (1935-)

A conversation about fixing the world

Sonja –  It was a random conversation that started innocently enough one evening in a restaurant. It turned out to be a rather heated argument about religion. Normally, arguments about religion are a waste of time and gets nobody nowhere. The same with politics. We believe what we believe. But this particular conversation /argument turned out to be quite insightful. I’m only repeating it here because I keep bumping into the same idea, especially when it comes to the older generation.

Who will fix the world?

We were talking about what we as ordinary human beings can do to make this world a better place. I was saying that we all make the choice everyday- either we build or we break down. It’s a choice between choosing to think or do positive or stir up the negative. When we come to the end of our lives do we want to leave the world that we lived in a better place or not? Sure, we cannot all be Ghandis or Mandelas, but surely there is room in our ordinary lives to create something better, even if we sometimes feel overwhelmed by the dysfunctional or negative events and people around us.

My conversation partner was quite disillusioned at this late stage in her life. All she was concerned about was living her life so that when she dies, her soul gets to God and into heaven. Her priority is to focus on her own life to ensure her own salvation. And that is all that matters.

Fair enough, we are all concerned about what happens to us when we die, but surely that cannot be the whole picture? We all eventually leave the world where we lived and functioned in for seventy odd years, if we’re lucky. At the end of a life, did we at least try to leave it a better place? No man is an island, nobody functions purely in his or her own little bubble. Like a wise man said, evil flourishes when good men do nothing.

My conversation partner leaves the world for God to fix, which will happen when Jesus returns.

Isn’t it one of the big drawbacks of religion – that we leave the world for God to fix? We somehow believe that it isn’t our job or our responsibility, and we certainly don’t believe we have the power to do it ourselves.

I have to ask myself: if we didn’t have this particular mindset for so many thousands of years – that we’re waiting for a messiah’s return to fix everything that is wrong with this world – wouldn’t we have been so much further as civilisations on this planet? More evolved, kinder, more caring, more responsible, more empowered?

I don’t want to make this a conversation about religion, and I do know many people who actively try to make a difference, but sometimes I catch myself wishing for some divine intervention – the Deus Ex Machina the old Greek tragedies loved so much.

The problem with rules and expectations…

Sonja van Wyk – We make up hundreds of rules to live by and how we expect other people to behave, especially in relationships, be it a marriage, a romantic relationship or a friendship. So much so that the rules become a maze to negotiate, and that’s where simplicity goes out of the window and we create further complications for ourselves.

We all accept that there will be certain “rules” which need to be negotiated in any relationship, mostly centred around consideration of each other’s feelings or time. That’s normal and healthy. The problem comes in when we expect others to behave in terms of our little rules: this is right; that is wrong; this is how you should behave; that is how you should be. Other people seldom can live up to these rules and expectations. They in turn have their own, and it doesn’t always match the ones that we have.

Related of course, are expectations: you cannot have rules and not have expectations about them being met. And the thing about expectations are that they are seldom met, and if they are, then not for long.

If we’re really honest about it, we’ll acknowledge that most of our suffering and emotional pain comes from this gap  – the gap between the expectation and the actual reality of the situation.

I expected her to love me. I expected him to become more successful. I expected my child to make better choices. I expected to have more – more money, more success, more love. But the reality of the situation is somewhat less than what I expected – and therein lies the source of my sorrow and discontent.

Can I change the reality? Is it in my power to do so? Perhaps, if it is my own life. If it concerns somebody else – then no. I don’t have the power or the right to make other people do what I want them to do. And if I can’t change the reality – if I have to accept the situation and the person as is – then all I can do is to let go of my expectations. Life becomes a whole lot simpler.

“I do my thing, and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful. If not it can’t be helped.” (Fritz Perls “A Gestalt Prayer”)

Waiting

Chris Terblanche –  There are few things more humiliating than having to wait for others. If someone makes you wait, it means that they are attending to things other than you. This, in turn, implies that whatever they have to do, whatever is on their plates, is more important than what you have to do or what is on your plate. When you are made to wait, the essential message is that you are not important.

Waiting…..

The easiest example is the typical medical doctor. I have never scheduled an appointment with a doctor that the good doctor had kept. He or she has always made me wait. I think that they are taught in their first year at university that they are special and unique and more important than anyone else. This is also why they use the term “patient”. By referring to someone who may be your equal or even your superior by any imaginable human standard as a “patient”, you reduce them to your subordinates, at least in your own perception. I am not a patient. I am a client. This term implies, as it should, that the visitor represents the livelihood of the person being visited. But most doctors forget this simple economical reality. They believe that they are superior to their patients, whether this was instilled by their proud mothers or by their lecturers or by the people who married them to show them off at dinner parties. Their imagination is far removed from reality though. Medicine is hardly the toughest course one can take. Being a doctor hardly makes you God. Congratulations on becoming a real life doctor; now get over yourself.

I do not mean to pick on doctors, even though they make it really easy to pick on them. I deliver a valuable service to a number of companies, and their representatives also make me wait. As much as they are my clients, and they therefore represent my livelihood, it is still humiliating to be disregarded in this way. But is this so different than the example of the doctor? The people who make you wait are not the company; at most, they represent a rather small part of that company. They too believe that they are superior, whether this was instilled by their own pride or by their managers or by the fact that they can approve payments from a bank account that does not belong to them. Their power and influence is as far removed from reality though. Being a manager in a large corporate is hardly the toughest of jobs. Approving payments hardly makes you the payer. Congratulations on becoming a manager in someone else’s business; now get over yourself.

This week though, I was pleasantly surprised. I went to consult with a highly qualified and very experienced specialist doctor. Not only was the appointment confirmed a few days in advance both by e-mail and by text, but she called me into her office exactly on time. The next day, one of my key corporate clients met me at exactly the time and place that we had arranged. I thought that I had entered the Twilight Zone…

These two singular instances of respect have redeemed so many others that had made me feel worthless and expendable. I am not naïve; I know that I will continue to interact with many people who behave as if they are superior to me and countless others who will make me wait because they believe that their time is more precious than mine. But perhaps we should all take a leaf from the books of these two people; maybe we should try to be the exception that at least attempts to redeem the rule. I have just added it to my list of New Years’ resolutions…

Stillness

Sonja –  We live in a society that is driven by action, movement, somewhere to go, things to do. To be still and inactive is somehow strange, a sign of indecision, of weakness, of not knowing what you want. The opposite is true. Sometimes inactivity is exactly what we need.

The trick, I think, is to understand that as much get done during periods of stillness as in periods of activity. Whatever we’re trying to create or achieve often takes on a life of its own over which we have no direct control. No creation of ours remains ours alone. Its path influences and interacts with others, and sometimes we need to wait for all the aspects, or other people, to be ready to join in whatever we are trying to create. It needs time to grow and ripen until the moment is ready for its manifestation. To move and force our way, and at all costs try to make it happen, can actually be counterproductive.

Wisdom lies in the discernment of when it is time for movement and continuing forward, and when it is time for stillness and rest and assessment. The heat of activity spirals back into the coolness of inactivity. Stillness is never wasted. Apart from giving us time to rest or heal, it provides fertile ground for the seeds of insight and knowledge for the next round of movement.

Topic 3 – Patience

Marc de J – Patience is difficult. Sometimes you found yourself in a period where no action causes progress… I call this limbo. It could last a few seconds to years. It just depends on the situation. Time then, needs to be filled. Busy work helps. I try to remind myself that I can’t make the world turn any slower (note: I didn’t say faster). Patience could also involve how we deal with people that are not on the same page. In the end it’s up to us to make our own fun when in the waiting mode.

Think about Doing

Often in limbo you find yourself thinking in circles. Just thinking for no good reason. This invariably leads to frustration and depression.

To break the circle: Think about Doing. You aren’t required to act but by thinking about doing (action) your mind pre-solves dilemmas that cause circularity. Then when the time to act arrives you are prepared. Remember the hardest thing we do is thinking. Thinking about doing helps you make good decisions when the time comes to act. It may seem a subtle distinction – just thinking and thinking about doing, but it is so critical to understand the difference – by thinking about doing you change your mindset and over time every circular thought finds a way out. Think about it. And like everything it’s hard but the more you practice the easier it gets.

 

See also Sonja’s post on why patience and stillness is sometimes necessary…

New Year’s Resolutions

Chris T – I love New Years’ resolutions. Do not misunderstand me; I cannot recall when last I had kept any of mine. I still smoke (it is 2011, who still smokes?), I still drink almost every day and I am still at least ten kilograms north of my ideal weight. Nevertheless, I strongly believe in the redemptive power of a New Year and this is why:

I believe that the entire human experience constitutes a series of new beginnings. Take day and night, for example. Every new morning represents an opportunity for you to do better than you did the day before, to fix a problem that was created the day before, or to relax from working a little too hard the day before. Our days are divided perfectly by night. Every time you wake represents an opportunity to awaken; to a new idea, to a new solution to an old problem or even to a new way of life.

The “new way of life”-type awakenings are usually reserved for the big occasions though, and New Year represents just such an occasion, particularly for adults. Children do not need any big occasions because they change all the time in any event. They learn new things every day, they grow smarter, they discover new music, they realise new interests and they pursue new passions and new partners. Every year, they are different in one way or another than they were the year before. Adult life tends to morph into long periods of existence with no discernable change at all; you learn very little, you listen to the same music, you have a fixed set of interests, you are likely married to the same person, living in the same house and doing the same job for years at a time.

New Year gives you a great opportunity to reassess your life, your situation and your priorities. Chances are that you do not change anything at all. Hopefully you love your partner, your house is a home and you are stimulated at work. Perhaps you cannot afford to leave your partner, your house is valued at less than your mortgage bond and you cannot change jobs because no-one is hiring. The point though is that you did consider your situation; you did take a critical view of your own life. Perhaps it has served to make you grateful for what you do have; perhaps it stirred you to make longer-term plans to get out of debt; perhaps it makes you enroll for a new course. If people generally at least considered their lives, their situations and their contributions, I believe that the world would be a much happier place. New Year, in a small way, helps to achieve just that.

I also love New Years’ resolutions for the very reason that they are seldom kept. I am not being facetious; it is a vital part of human life that we learn to accept our blind-spots and that we learn to forgive ourselves. Most resolutions are grandiose and life-changing; and usually because they are made in a state of inebriation at a place of celebration. A few days later, when the morphed reality sets in, we fall back into old patterns and familiar routines. But do not berate yourself or think that you are weak; you are just human. If you really want to make that big change, you can and will make it on the twelfth of March too. I believe that you will likely eventually keep all of your resolutions; just not this year. Every New Year new seeds are planted, but not all of them will bloom immediately.

Make resolutions. Keep them if you can. If you can’t, then try to keep them next year. I completed what I believe to be a good manuscript four years ago and for four years I have been promising myself to find a publisher. It has still not been published. Guess what my New Year’s resolution is?