I do not make resolutions before or after the New Year. I have lived a life from birth to a much older age with many ups and downs; highs and lows. Did I cause the ups? And did fate cause the catastrophic downs? Or vice versa? Who knows? What I do know is that I agree with Oscar Wilde when he implies that News Year resolutions are basically dust before they are even imagined. Ever since I was very young, I have been on alert. Anf after the death of my father when I was a child; I soon leaned with each new year that followed; that a new year would likely offer scatterings of good events but also "out of the blue"painful things that can knock one sideways. So we can make resolutions all we want, but as Oscar Wilde says, "Good resolutions are simply checks that men/women draw on a bank where they have no account." Ogden Nash pretty much fits my view of every New Year.
Good Riddance, But Now What?
By Ogden Nash
I do not make resolutions before or after the New Year. I have lived a life from birth to a much older age with many ups and downs; highs and lows. Did I cause the ups? And did fate cause the catastrophic downs? Or vice versa? Who knows? What I do know is that I agree with Oscar Wilde when he implies that News Year resolutions are basically dust before they are even imagined. Ever since I was very young, I have been on alert. Anf after the death of my father when I was a child; I soon leaned with each new year that followed; that a new year would likely offer scatterings of good events but also "out of the blue"painful things that can knock one sideways. So we can make resolutions all we want, but as Oscar Wilde says, "Good resolutions are simply checks that men/women draw on a bank where they have no account." Ogden Nash pretty much fits my view of every New Year.
Good Riddance, But Now What?
By Ogden Nash
By Ogden Nash
Come children, gather round my knee
Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.
Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.
Come children, gather round my knee
Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.
Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.
There are other rather earnest people like G.K. Chesterton that write: no doubt, in all earnesty:
"The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul."
Well, we know that fresh new souls are not just given away. Can one even buy a soul? Or does he mean if we try harder and harder our soul can be recycled or rebuilt into a better form. Against all odds I suspect that could be done - but events outside of us can alter our ability to hold the line.
Resiliency, humour, close friends and family and creative satisfying work that we love to do are an important part of accepting what each of us is about to face.
Here is another by Tennyson that might ring a bell....filled with resolutions that might go bad if not taken care of by ringing them OUT.....
Resiliency, humour, close friends and family and creative satisfying work that we love to do are an important part of accepting what each of us is about to face.
Here is another by Tennyson that might ring a bell....filled with resolutions that might go bad if not taken care of by ringing them OUT.....
Ring Out, Wild Bells
By Lord Alfred Tennyson
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land.
