A NEW BEGINNING

The new year is almost here. Many of us will wait up to welcome 2017 in whatever ways we deem proper -- or, perhaps improper. Many of us will skip the whole thing and get to bed as we always do, even if only to get a few more hours of welcome sleep-in time. No matter what we do or do not do, 2017 will begin shortly.

           

As with all new beginnings we have the opportunity to reflect both upon the past and upon the future. Many of us know by the time the end of the year arrives that there are areas of needed improvement in our lives. We’ve known it for a long time now. But the new year is a good time to put-off-to the changes necessary. Then we begin with relish -- okay, we just begin -- to start to do that which we have put off.

Thus, the new year offers us the opportunity to be born again, if you will, to start all over. We can start over with a clean slate, which we can do at the beginning of a new year or the beginning of a new day. We do anyway whether we realize it or not. But it won’t be easy. We know that.

Every year we resolve to start over, to begin anew, to be born again better and more determined. And every year we blow it, almost before we begin. The reason we do, I think, is that we often forget that being born again is not a painless experience. Birth is not a painless experience. Ask anyone who has given birth.

           

So why should any rebirth, born-again-experience be free from pain? It never is. It may be anticipated and joy-filled and exciting and uplifting. But it is always painful. If it is not, it is not real and it will not last. Change is always painful. Babies cry when they enter a new living space. They give up security to something unknown.

           

We are no different. Our present life, no matter how bad or how painful, is at least known. We may anticipate and be joy filled, excited and uplifted about a new birth, a new life, a change for the better. But once we begin to make that change, we discover just how difficult, just how painful it really is. That is not to discourage us. It is simply to remind us that if we truly want the new year to be better than the old, we have to work at it. We will have to change or else it will not happen.

           

“Oh!” we say. “I’ll just have to think about that,” we say. Well, okay. Think about it. But, then, don’t just think. Do. Those of us who are old enough to remember, remember those old “Think and Do” books we had in first grade. They tried to teach us a lesson we have often forgotten. Before doing anything, we need to think about what we are about to do. But then we need to get on with the doing.

           

The thinking may be difficult enough, even frightening enough. A few days is not enough time to think about what 2017 should be like and what we might need to do to change to make this new year better than last. Okay. So we don’t begin January 1. So we think about it some more. But a time will come when we need to start the doing, the changing. It will be painful. But it will be worth it.