Tag: Mortality

Goodbyes are good buys!

 

As the saying goes(by Moira Rogers), the two hardest things to say in life are hello for the first time and goodbye for the last.

 

That said, saying goodbye also means looking forward to new encounters. In a few years from now, you will have new skills, a new title, a new profession or business, new customers and a different level of influence.

 

All of this forward ratchet requires that you celebrate less – all the things that you are not doing any longer. Things that you have left behind. Let go. Disengaged with. Walked away from. Said ‘goodbye‘ to. In a sense. Past.

 

To land a new job, you leave behind your old one. The adult emerges upon the child being said goodbye to.

Much as we would like to believe that growth comes with no goodbyes, but it does. It is better to reconcile to the fact that what we begin will likely come to an end. Every beginning has an ending and every ending has a new beginning. When we go into it with eyes wide open, plan for it, then we will do it better.

 

Even book titles go by the names like Sorrow and Bliss, by Meg Mason, which while charming and lacerating in its humor but is also studded with all these moments of small-scale tragedy that make it feel hard to breathe. The price of being awake to life is being also awake to mortality. 

 

” Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.” –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

What will you leave behind? What will you embrace?

 

ENDS

 

 

 

 

 

The New Year and Resolutions, I tell you..

“What the New Year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the New Year” – Vern McLellan.

 

It is said that you may be whatever you resolve to be. Nothing relieves and ventilates the mind like a resolution.

 

As we say adios to another year and get ready to welcome another, let us take a look at some potential resolutions that we will bravely (or tamely) bring to fore.

 

“I want to laugh more, the laughter that makes you cry and makes your sides ache.” Now that is worth a standing ovation.

 

“My intention for 2023 is to replace mean thoughts with kind and patient ones.” Keep the applause going.

 

I stay resolved to take “everything (especially politics) and everyone less seriously and try to be the best person I can.”

 

Going further, another one can go like this..
“I resolve not to take anything personally or overthink or politicize any comments … just play dumb and not engage, like a robot, like I’m Siri.”
A more succinct one would be..
“I want to be better at understanding others.” That’s a great starting point.
And a perennial one for a lot of us would be: “talk less, listen more”.
” To live with gratitude and an acceptance of our mortality is a fine realization not only on New Year’s Day, but every day “.  Give this the cult status.
Will be speaking for many of us when you say, “Less screen time, more real-world time.”  
How about ” from time to time, send handwritten snail-mailed notes/letters to family and friends.” Definitely worth the ink that will be used.

 

How about some idiosyncratic resolutions? Like “I intend to eliminate very and really from my vocabulary”. That is really a very good idea. Oops. Sorry.

 

 

I heard about a resolution from a friend which was to have “someone repair the wristwatch his dad bought him for his high-school graduation in 1985, so he can wear it again.” This is truly timeless.

 

 

Here’s one with a purpose ” I would like to continue and increasingly support biodiversity in urban areas “.  Enrollments are open. Let’s go for it.
That seems a lot more complicated than my big idea of going back down one pants size, but a plan’s a plan.

 

 

Some of us are charging right at 2023 with angry-rhino determination. Keep the fire in the belly burning.

 

 

“Good resolutions are like babies crying in church. They should be carried out immediately.” ― Charles M. Sheldon
So, let’s Begin Again!
ENDS