Sixteen times per minute, twenty-two thousand breaths in a day. No time like the present. There are no other excuses, but there are always other ways. Breathe. Choose today to speak up when you can, push out the latent sorrow, guilt, and anguish only you can understand. Inhale. There is no life, no oxygen, like this day. Despite our selected perceptions, there is not a single breath to waste.
As we tear the cellophane off a brand new year and look forward to what will come in the weeks and months ahead, it’s only natural to set goals and intentions. It is what we do as a society; common practice for our lives and times.
We make resolutions to find deeper sleep, exercise more, eat better, save more money, and complete all those things we have started. Often, in doing so, we set ourselves up for disappointment.
I’m not going to make any resolutions this year. Yes, I’ve got things that need to be tended to, and so much stuff in a perennial state of ‘almost done’, but I’m not going to make an exhaustive list and cave under the pressure of expectations.
Instead I’ve set a motto I hope will carry me through the year: Try to live tomorrow a little better than today.
It seems pretty simple to me. Each day I will try a little harder to get stuff done, I will try to communicate better than I have in the past, try to be a little kinder, and I will try to enjoy things that come my way without overthinking how they came to be.
I will try to make each day a little better.
Now, I’m not sure there is a quantitative method of measuring my progress, and I’m not really going to look for one. Don’t we already have enough checks and balances built into our lives? And as soon as you attempt to put some system of metrics in place, it just becomes a numbers game.
I am going to let my emotions and feelings determine how the day has been, or will be. I will make an honest, authentic attempt daily in some way. I will try because trying is the only way anything will happen.
The moment you stop trying is the moment you begin dying, and I have far too much to live for.
Time: a challenge more than a choice, most of the time. For most of us, as we progress, a learned experience from confrontation to cooperation.
We come to accept the realities we acquire and, armed with gratitude and knowledge of what has passed, step forward into days and years ahead. Decades.
Wisdom comes from knowing when to speak and when to shut up. A learned experience, avoiding confrontation anytime, in the name of contentment.
Fill your days — whenever you can, however you can — on your own terms. A calendar gladly misleads; or do we simply misunderstand our glorious perceptions.
