To look back and reflect, happy 2009

Ask ourselves now at the dawn of a new year, while picking up the wine glasses and tacking upon the wall the new calendar, that paper compartment with the perhaps cliche, perhaps nostalgic, perhaps clever images attached: what was and what will be? These squares blank, each waiting to be filled.

We each at the starting line stand, a countdown is heard above the throng, each in his own voice joining in, as zero called a gun shot is fired and we set out on this 365 day lap around the sun. Vowing at this outset to change something perhaps or to continue to become or to evolve into something better.

This day excuses all the rest. Our sole chance to wipe the eraser across the blackboard and return the words previously written to the white dust from which they came. There is value in this symbolic gesture, though the act is without weight or significance apart from that endowed by the collective whole. Without such an act word would overlay word until a mass of illegible whiteness, a confused mass of neglected promises, goals, and commitments, obscured the whole board.

Allowing ourselves one last glance, a weight of sincere regret descends and is chased away by one more glass of champagne. We can permit ourselves tonight, we say, if only tonight, that forbidden pleasure, forgiveness. Tonight, all our shortcomings can slip away and fall safely onto a soft bed of fresh promises.

He speaks of failure as if it were the only state mankind could ever find itself in. As if the sincere and perceiving eye could only admit to visions of failing and broken humans. He reflects also upon those successes, those events that he willingly recalls as triumphant. Wherein he rose above the situation, the limitation, or his old handicaps, wherein his vision was broadened, his mind was strengthened, and his ignorance removed. We see him, nonetheless, wading through a quagmire. These, even the best of these, do not exist to be congratulated, to be applauded, or to be gloated over. They exist merely as footstones upon which the foot treads. A path that has lead irrevocably to today, the first day of the new year.

Past deeds great and small, noble and ignoble are the victuals that supplied the dining tables of our yesterdays’ meals upon which we supped. The patterns of these meals, but not the meals themselves have commanded the shape of our bodies, the circumference of our girths. No pattern can be altered in a day, or in a promise. No pattern can be altered without much stumbling, without much effort, without much determination. Yet always this pattern is changing, with or without our allowance, with or without our forgiveness. Therefore, to promote positive change, practice daily forgiveness, cease self judgment altogether if you can. Perfection is a dirty myth, stumbling blocks a lie.

Build in your mind a castle so impermeable it ceases to be a assailed, it ceases even to be spoken of. This castle may not exist, but your approach of it does. So once your castle is built, forget all about it and mind only your steps, for each step in stepping is all that matters.