A Look Ahead

I cannot help as the year draws to a close to reflect on the future. I've done blogs before on hope, an emotion and quality that is possibly humanity's most important. We need to hope as without it life would be unbearable. The march into 2010 is proceeded by a particularly difficult year for Americans and others abroad. Financially speaking, never has the middle class fell so far, so fast. Perhaps we will learn to apply the advice of Henry David Thoreau urging us to set priorities, warning that “Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplify, simplify.” These words ring true as people struggle to pay their mortgages and learn to save while cutting their thirst for material wealth.

As I look ahead at my upcoming year I think of Lincoln's poignant words: “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” He also said, “A person is generally as happy as they are willing to be.” I personally am moving into 2010 in a mental state better than I moved into 2009. I am happier and at peace despite Dena's lack of employment. Could this be the simplification that Thoreau talks about? We have slowed down our lives and this brings peace.

But, as I always do, restlessness will probably set in. I'm never very good with too much quiet. I've been thinking lately of getting back in to mentoring a teen. This will make my life busier but will hopefully provide some benefit to someone less fortunate. I am lucky to have two families that love me just the whacky way I am and some do not have that luxury. I am rich beyond belief. John Greenleaf Whittier reminded us that our future is often the harvest of our actions: “The tissue of the life to be, we weave with colors all our own. And in the field of destiny, we reap as we have sown.”

So with those words of wisdom from others far more thoughtful than I, I ask you to take a quiet moment and take stock of your past and think about how 2010 can be so much more rewarding for you.