Happy New Year.

People are funny.

Most of the year we go happily about our business, dutifully immersed in our daily lives and schedules, oblivious to the majority of events in the world around us. We chat with our friends about the weather and what Sally Bloggins did. (A sin what happened wasn't it?) We do this routinely without ever really knowing or, in many cases for that matter, caring about what happens in the world around us. We live our own lives.

Then, with American Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years all on top of each other, we proclaim loudly to reflect and consider others. Aye, the same others we have been ignoring for the past 10 months. This srikes me as a load of self-righteous bullshit. Hah!! Most of us spend ten and a half months of the year unable to see past our own noses, and then think ourselves spiritual and reflective when we go through the motions while sitting at a table with food enough on it to feed the hungry for a week?  I wonder.... How deep do our reflections really go? Do we really get the religious messages of peace on earth good will towards men? All men? Even the means ones? Do we really get what Christmas purports to be about?


Look, don't get me wrong, while I am not catholic,  or even christian for that matter,  I too have been and continue to be, self-centric enough to be correctly judged as being completely hypocritical But I put to you that WE, as a society, must do better. Shouldn't we all try to be kinder all of the year? Shouldn't we try to acknowledge and celebrate each other more often? To stop and consider more often than once, the relative good or evil that we have done in the past year? Are our lives that busy we can't find just a little time?

This past year I have been guilty of horrible lapses in judgement. I have placed trust in people that did not deserve it, and concurrently did not put enough faith in people that did deserve it. I failed to walk
in the shoes of others and then had the gall to judge them.  I failed to be considerate of the bigger picture when I should of been.  I have also been careless with praise at times and to willing to withhold it at other times.  My entire working and social life were spent with too much reacting and feeling, and not enough thinking and considering. I have come up far short of what I aspire to be as a person. I have work to do in terms of managing and sorting through my bag of rocks.

BUT I refuse to make a new years resolution. Why? Because I can't keep em.  I know this. Fickle and forgetful - that's me.  But what I will try and do this year, is to take that Thanksgiving to New Years gluttony of righteous concern and spread it out across the year. I hope to find some time each month to think and reflect about who I am and who I want to be, and to evaluate for myself if I am there, and if not, why I am not there.  It could be illuminating, it might be depressing, but I do believe it is needed.  I can no longer move through the world in the mindless cycle of social expectation at the duly appointed calendar moments. I don't want to be accused of having or sharing my own hamburgers so I must try and do something. But it's not a resolution! 

Its more of a goal that I hope to honor.

After all, if we keep our expectations low we are far less likely to be disappointed right??