Today is Monday, January 3rd. The weekend, at least in my perspective, didn’t count because it was well, the weekend. Weekends are for rest, fun, and for catching up, so Monday is the day when the brand new year should officially begin.
I read two articles this morning about getting ready for the new year. One of them focused on being thankful and forgiving yourself, while the other one allowed for appreciating the ordinary pleasures in every day. They were both written by seniors and neither one focused on making new year resolutions.
I liked the message from Elaine Greenspan for the Albuquerque Journal: (Albuquerque N.M.: January 20, 2008) about appreciating the ordinary and realizing that each day is in itself “extraordinary”. That probably doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you are recently retired. There is something about waking up each morning and feeling good about yourself, which is quite extraordinary if you have lived a lifetime of what we often a considered the “daily grind”. Still, I like New Year resolutions. The thought of starting over and reinventing ones self on that first Monday in January is quite exciting! The author figured that she was as perfect as she was ever going to be, that her basic personality was never going to change, and that being organized wasn’t as important as it was cracked up to be. She also went on to discuss how she was never going to do this and she was never going to that, and why bother to study a new language or learn how to play an instrument at this stage of the game anyway. She thought it was okay using pride in past accomplishment as an excuse to slack off in the present.
What do you think? I like to think that I am still a work in progress and that there is still hope that I might get better.
The second article was by Irene Michael a columnist for (The Courier: Houma, La: December 2008) about being thankful. She also touches a philosophical note as she reminds us that every day brings the possibility that you can begin again. If we slack off on our resolutions, we can pick ourselves up and begin the next day. This choice tidbit hits the nail on the head; this is where we live. No one is perfect and our good intentions often go awry. The idea is to start all over again and with each new start we do the very best we can. This is what Mondays are for, so don’t let anyone dampen your excitement about starting over, learning new things, taking better care of yourself or even doing cartwheels on the lawn. You can start over at any age.
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