Resolve for Every Moment

The danger of writing a New Year's Day blog is a certain pressure to say something profound about the dynamics of a new year. But the truth is, I am not sure the simple turning of a calendar from 2008 to 2009 makes a significant difference. Aside from new (and presumably thinner) business budgeting and first quarter metric targets, most of our situations are pretty much the same as they were at 11:59 p.m. yesterday. Same goes for our checkbooks and our job security, as well as the state of our marriages, the unfinished yard work outside and a host of other realities.

Some of us, I suppose, need the symbolic, psychological lift of a fresh number to increase our motivation toward elusive goals or aspirations. I've been there. What I'm seeking in this season of life, however, is steady discipline--to keep making incremental progress, day after day, week after week, month after month, regardless of what time of year it happens to be or what year it happens to be, until time itself becomes irrelevant and everything revolves around the sacredness of the present moment.

I find that waiting for the calendar to flip to January puts me in a reactive stance, along with any other external events I am looking to for the blast of a metaphorical starting gun. The easy attraction to such externals, I believe, is the fact that we are submerged in so many reasons not to do something worthwhile, something above and beyond the norm. Every day presents a multitude of obstacles to what we truly want, most of them of inherent value in their own right but a little less than best...and so, knowing this on at least a subconscious level, we gravitate toward the "big event" that will give us that little extra juice to persevere past mediocrity.

But the juice is at hand in everyday, ordinary life and the precious moments that must be recognized. Its scented nectar is recognized by those with a nose to smell, its beauty available for beholding by those who will see, its wordless song of reaching for the prize tuned in to the ears that will hear.