Old Year's Appreciations

It is about that time of year when many of us will start making New Year's Resolutions. But before we begin this time honored tradition, may I suggest that we take a few moments to make some Old Year's Appreciations? I feel like often, but in the last several years in particular, when I get to the end of the year, the overwhelming feeling I have is good riddance. There have been plenty of good reasons for this, especially considering all of the national political, economic and social changes in the last few years - pandemics, protests, wars, inflation, scandals and all the rest. But if we are being honest, however uncompromisingly bleak our years appear to be looking back, with a little effort, we can find the good things that have happened. We may always feel when January 1 rolls around that we have accomplished nothing, that we are stuck in a rut, that in every way our lives have only stayed the same or gotten worse, but this is simply not true. For every person alive today, in the last 365 days there have been some moments that were worth living for. Each of us have had moments in the last year that changed us for the better. There were times that we started a new good habit, or stopped an old bad habit - maybe not permanently, but for a few days or a few minutes we found the desire and the grit to make a conscious choice to improve our lives and the world around us and we actually followed through. Yes, maybe we gave up too soon or encountered obstacles or barriers that we had not anticipated. There were times in the last year that we got excited about a new movie or TV show or book or album and we couldn't wait to tell our friends and family how good it was. There were times that we ate a really good meal, or had an amazing night's sleep, or worked out and felt strong and powerful. In the last year there have been moments that have excited us, thrilled us, and deeply moved us. We may be tempted to look back and remember only that our car broke down seemingly every other week, and forget that we had plenty of days where our car worked perfectly fine and got us to where we needed to go. We may look back and be tempted to despair that it seems all we do is snap and yell at our kids, and forget all of the times when we were not only patient, but deeply grateful to have the love and the strength to be the parent that our children needed us to be. As we head into each new year, in our haste to use the power of the New Year's Resolution to instantaneously and dramatically change every facet of our lives, we take a harshly negative view of our lives in general but of the last year in particular, because we once again failed to live up to all of our possible expectations. It is never a bad thing to resolve to improve our lives, but we may find that we are able to set more attainable goals and have greater strength to achieve them when we look back and first appreciate how far we have come.