Resolutions

In the run-up to New Year's Day it occurred to me I hadn't heard much, if anything, about New Year's resolutions. Are they passé? Do they not matter since they have a built-in/guaranteed failure rate? I'm not looking for an answer merely musing.

Maybe it's because of that built-in failure rate with this new year now upon us, I've decided to try something less stressful with, what I think, will be a higher rate of success and that is: aphorisms. An aphorism is a short, pithy maxim and I've come up with three, based on what I learned in the course of 2013.

Keep Calm and Be Patient. Borrowed from Keep Calm and Carry On, which was a motivational poster produced by the British government in 1939 several months before the beginning of World War II, it became a way to raise the morale of the British public. However, in 2000 it was rediscovered and has, sadly because it's getting hackneyed, been used as a decorative theme for a range of products such as Keep Calm and Be a Quaker or Keep Calm and Ring Carson for Tea, an obvious homage to Downton Abbey.

But I digress.

While "being calm" is not often an issue for me when the chips are down, the "being patient" is ever a work in progress and there are some days when I wonder if I will ever be a patient person. I envision the powers that be (that's God for me) to be shaking his head in dismay but, hey, we're all works in progress. Right?

Be in the moment. We're always in a hurry to get somewhere or do something and technology doesn't help us on this score. I'm learning that thinking or worrying about something off in the future that may or may not ever happen robs me of today, of right now and that's all I/we have . . . is right NOW.

My goal for this year is to pay attention to whatever I'm doing, or not doing, at any given moment. I will make every effort not to worry about things I have no control over. Think about it, this is how time slips through our fingers. We're so focused on the future that we miss the present, the present (of time and the gift) of now!

Moving along, my last aphorism comes from someone I've never met but whose email a few days after Christmas impacted me in a major way with just two words:

Have faith. How simple yet how difficult in times of trouble particularly at a time when our entire world is in a state of flux on many different levels. My goal for this year is to have faith every day, no matter what happens.

Somewhere in the back of my mind there's a fourth aphorism but at the moment my mind is drawing a very large blank. If it materializes in the next few days I will post about it but if not, then these three will do.

Wishing you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!!

Namaste
Chris