New Year's Resolutions

In the year 2010 I will do my best to improve my life by doing the following things.

This is the time we look at our life and resolve to change things for the better. For most of us the list is made up of things like losing weight, stopping a bad habit like smoking, or starting a something new like a job or hobby. No matter what we put on the list we promise faithfully that we are going to follow the list and become a better person.

Unfortunately most of us never manage to live up to our list. Try as we might we fall short of the lofty goals and expectations we have set for ourselves; and in the end we watch them go down in flames. The fact is we make the list based on the shortcomings we see in our life and fail to realize that if we could change we would have long ago.

For this reason I’m suggesting that we all should resolve to look for things that are not so hard to change. Things that would make a difference in the little corner of the world we live in. Things like saying I love you to those we care about, telling others thank you when they do things for us, or looking for little acts of kindness we can perform for people we meet along as we travel down this rocky road we call life.

I’d make that a resolution and add it to my list, but then it would never get done.

Mortality

Something about sitting alone at a computer in the middle of the night makes one think of mortality, old age, and losing one’s loved ones.

As we get older it seems that our warranty begins to run out, our parts give out, and we discover our body is subject to recall by its maker. We look around and discover that the multitude of people that surrounded us at twenty has shrunk to a handful. The question becomes not if but when someone else that we know will slip away to that quite place, that great unknown that waits for all of us in the end.

The wonderful world of medicine is working overtime to find a way for us to live forever, but I wonder who would want to. In the end if we live long enough we will find that the things we knew have ceased to exist and we are living in someone else’s world. Technology will have dragged us into a future that that will leave us longing for “the good old days”. A future populated by things we never dreamed possible and run by children. Pushed out of our comfort zone and striped of the familiar faces and places of our youth, we look for places where we can gather with our fellow survivors and remember the past.

Mankind was never meant to live forever, this life is but a step on the road we must follow as the true person inside this shell grows and becomes one with the universe.

To Smoke Or Not to Smoke

To all my friends who smoke I would like to extend my condolences. The world just got a little smaller, now you can’t go out to dinner or the corner bar if you want to smoke while you’re out. With a few exceptions you have to go out in the cold cruel world outdoors to comment the slow suicide you enjoy so much. I feel your pain and frustration at not being able to inflect the odder of your habit on those of us who just want have a nice dinner out or share a drink with our friends without choking on the gray cloud of your addiction.

There are those of us who do not wish to smell the stench or breathe the second hand smoke that results from wrapping a leaf in paper, putting that in your mouth, and setting fire to it. The world will not end nor will the economy of our state be destroyed by the act of banning smoking in your favorite bar or restaurant. Indeed you may find that the experience of dinning out may actually be improved by being able to savor the smell as well as the taste of the dinner you are eating.

I am sorry that you might feel that your rights are being crushed by the cold hard heal of the government. No one has said you can’t smoke, only that you can’t do it where it will infringe on the rights of others to live in a smoke free world. We set limits’ on where and when we can drink in public, why should we not do the same with smoking.