Making a New Year’s Resolution? Don’t!

It’s good to have traditions for the New Year, but not all traditions are positive. One I have done without for many years is to make a New Year’s resolution. Here’s why:

You will break it. Sad to say, nearly all New Year’s resolutions are broken, probably within a few weeks to a couple of months of their making. Oh, the motivation is pure. Say, you really, really resolve to lose that ten pounds you gained over the holidays, not to mention the three to five pounds that crept up on you over the year, like they have each year since you passed twenty-five. Don’t be too hard on yourself, it happens to the purest among us. It’s just the natural aging process, our wealthy society, our holiday binging philosophy, and just plain human nature.

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Motorhome Boondock view of Kluane Lake, Yukon Territory, Canada

Kluane Lake, Yukon in late August, 2010 from the window of our motorhome. In Yukon Territory, you can pretty much “camp” wherever you can find a flat spot to park. Our Winnebego View is small enough to park just about any place you could park a van, yet has the essentials of any home. We watched the view morph to mellow evening light. We followed animal tracks in the rock and sand beach, and returned “home” to stir fry vegetables and pasta and a glass of wine. Darkness came quickly and we watched night displace day with billions of stars through our skylight. Simple pleasures are best.

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Phillip Ashley: R324, Nazareth, Ky 40048 Important Person

In late 1995 we were riding our tandem, Zippy across remote Rio Grande, West Texas. We were 30 miles from any town, enjoying the warmth and sun, racing winter in New Mexico. A seventies era car passed us slowly, dented and rusted, and pulled over on the opposite shoulder a hundred yards ahead. Being alone, on our bicycle for about 11,000 since leaving our home in Washington State six months before, we naturally looked carefully at unusual cars and unusual behavior. As we neared the car, a man in his late 60’s emerged from the car and waved us down. He looked harmless, even cute, so we stopped and smiled as he approached with his antique camera, and took this picture.

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The (Chinese) Communist Party Are Eating Their Young

Our world is becoming complicated. Cold War ways of thinking about Asia in particular are useless, damaging to our foreign policy. I wish more Americans would use their wealth to see, really see, our World, and understand that it is not as we were taught in school. Go and experience for yourselves, the lives of people, who except for accident of birth, are not that much different than you. Remember that; not that much different than you.

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