I did not wait up to let the old year out the door and the new year in, as is customary in some quarters.
I knew that whether I was awake or asleep would make no difference whatsoever to whether the calendar turned from 2021 to 2022.
Krista and I hosted the three grandchildren for the evening and overnight while their parents gathered with some friends for a New Year’s Eve party. I’m sure they had a good time.
I remember many a New Year’s Eve when we would gather either at church for a watchnight service of reflection, prayer and worship, or at the home of family and friends for a traditional celebration involving eating, visiting and shooting fireworks.
Good memories.
This time, no special gathering was planned, but grands Harper, Beckett and Baylor provided some excitement just the same. You might say they got the adrenaline pumping from time to time. No fireworks were needed. We all attended the Christmas Eve fireworks show in Sumner, so I figured there was no way we could top that.
What precious memories those are and will be.
We got the babies bedded down for the night and turned in long before midnight, bidding farewell to the outgoing year and welcome to the incoming year in our sleep.
I don’t know about you, but I was ready for 2021 to ease on down the road. I am anxious to see what 2022 has in store for us.
While we always want to be optimistic as we enter a new year — after all, those calendar pages are pristine, unstained by life’s trials, troubles and tribulations, offering a reason to be hopeful — we never know what it will bring to us, both collectively and individually.
That is the very nature of our existence here on this oblate spheroid we call earth.
We ponder, plan and prepare for the next day, but we never know whether it will come. We trust that it will, but there is no real assurance that we will see another dawn.
Yesterday was a reality and today is an opportunity, but tomorrow is only a possibility.
I don’t mean to wax grim, but just as 2021 was swept into the pages of history to join each preceding year, life does what it is going to do and simply moves on.
It reminds me of a Peanuts cartoon I saw showing Charlie Brown and Snoopy sitting on the end of a dock, feet dangling over the water, discussing life.
“Some day, we will all die, Snoopy,” says Charlie Brown.
“True,” Snoopy replies, “but on all the other days, we will not.”
So in the meantime, life continues and we go about planning and preparing to execute those plans as best we can.
In that vein, and because it is traditional, let me express a few plans for this year.
Do I normally make so-called resolutions? Not really.
When I do make “resolutions,” do I always share them with the public? Certainly not.
In my mind, setting a goal for self-improvement is a very personal matter, but it does not have to be.
Merriam-Webster defines the word “resolve,” as used in this context, as making “a definite and serious decision to do something.”
Meanwhile, that dictionary defines “hope” as “to want something to happen or be true,” “desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment.”
I have a few standard unspoken resolutions, such as losing weight, exercising more (or at all, for Pete’s sake) and improving my eating habits, all of which would, hopefully, improve my state of well-being.
I am not oblivious.
I am too portly, don’t move enough and I eat too much of the wrong types of food.
My plan is to try to improve those things about myself, and a lot more, during this year — which already is ticking away.
Next weekend, we will have spent one-half of the first month, or 1/24th of 2022.
Because life waits on no one, I will try to be more wide awake, more engaged, more invested this year. What that will mean is yet to be determined, but I have a mental picture of what it could mean.
Here’s hoping that you and yours will have a happy, safe and successful rest of 2022, and that you realize any goals that you may have set.
