Happy New Year!

We will open the book.  Its pages are blank.  We are going to put words on them ourselves.  The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.

                                                            ~ Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Happy New Year!  The idea that 365 days stand before us, fresh and unmarked, ready to be embraced is rather daunting.  As I flip through my new 2012 Metropolitan Museum of Art calendar book that my Dad gave me for Christmas, I am hesitant to write in it because I want 2012 to remain unchanged.  What will this year bring?  Will I be ready?  How many resolutions should I make?

Well, that's easy because I don't have any New Year's resolutions.  When I made resolutions in the past, I only did so because I felt I was supposed to and not because I wanted to.  Going through the exercise of making resolutions always feels as though I am setting myself up for the year.  Instead, I approach each day as a chance to try and get it right.  I strive to be realistic about what I can achieve and what I can't.  With God's grace, sometimes it works and then sometimes it doesn't.  I remind myself that it's not the end of the world when things fall apart.

The point is to keep trying because you're human and you can only do your best and that's about all you can expect from yourself.  The feeling that we have today of looking forward to a brand new year is something I try to bring to the beginning of each new day.  I start the day reminding myself that today is a day that has never happened before; that today is good day because I have a chance to live and explore it.

So despite my hestitation to write in my new 2012 calendar, I will open the book, examine the dates on the blank pages and begin to live.