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Number 118 - January 2012 Stumbling So
here we are once again at the year's
turning. Like the Roman god Janus, we look backward and
forward at the same
time.
And we make
resolutions. And how did the
2011 resolutions work out
for us? Do we even remember them? How quickly did we
abandon them? These
questions are not intended to make us feel bad;
they're intended to show us
that we're all in the same leaky boat. Year after year
we resolve to eat less,
exercise more, drink less or not at all, stop smoking,
spend more time with the
family, knuckle down and get that degree or promotion,
read War and
Peace. Okay, some of us succeed
- don't gloat. But it almost seems as though, for most
of us, our New Year's
resolutions contain within themselves the seeds of
their own destruction. I've written
almost yearly about New Year's
resolutions, often about my own. Maybe I thought that
making public my
intentions, I'd feel more compelled to act on them.
Things didn't quite work
out. So I've been
thinking back on major
decisions and changes, and none of them involved New
Year's resolutions. They
happened because something hit me upside the head.
Giving up tobacco and
alcohol, controlling weight, practicing meditation,
even starting this
newsletter, have come about when I felt an inner
compulsion to act. Compared to
the impulse of a keenly felt need, a New Year's
resolution is thin soup. The
upside-the-head stuff can be effective,
but I suspect most of us have ignored some pretty big
hits. A lot of the time,
I wasn't listening, I wasn't looking, I wasn't
feeling. Sometimes it took
multiple whacks for me to get the message. And I'm
probably ignoring a few even
as I type this. So maybe the
best resolution to make is to
listen, look, and feel - to pay attention, to be as
open as possible to the messages
that come from without and within. One more thing:
an awkward stumble -
illness, an unintended cruelty, a weekend we can't
remember, a DUI citation, a
major deadline missed - can be an opportunity to pay
attention. But the first
and obvious message from a stumble is to regain
equilibrium, to try to make the
insult go away. A saying attributed to Winston
Churchill goes, "People
stumble over opportunities every day, most just pick
themselves up and carry on
walking." Happy New Year. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ © Copyright 2012 by Tim Baehr. All Rights Reserved. Powered by |