HOW TO MAKE IT A HAPPY NEW YEAR!
JAN 5, 2024
Here's a thought that was inspired from a recent dinner and evening chat with a friend this new year. If you knew you only had so much time left to live (I'd say imagine different amounts of time like 1, 2, 5, 10, 15 or even 20 years), what would you do? What would your vision board look like, what would be on the bucket list? It's a when push comes to shove question for before you actually get shoved off. Will you take a stand and withstand, will you push back? One could write volumes from the imagination, but what real life actions might this exercise impart upon you, forthwith?
This is a great thought exercise in the new year to see where you want to focus your time, talent and treasure, how you might reallocate your resources, build your faith, learn or experience something new, serve others, and so on. Do you want to leave behind anything? Perhaps figure out a way to put a smile on the face of someone after you're gone? To make a lasting impactful image with photography or with the help of AI, maybe write something timeless? Leave a fun geocaching experience for your friends and family? You can have some fun with this mental exercise. You can also work on improving your habits and optimizing your chances for a longer horizon of life in good health and mental faculties.
It is not the intention to be morbid, but life goes on and life ends all the time. I'm going to a funeral for a friend's mother today, a friend who also just celebrated the birth of a new child.
I'll end with a poem by the former Dean of Admissions at my alma mater, Emory University School of Medicine, John Stone, III, M.D. entitled "Death1":
Death I have seen come on slowly as rust sand or suddenly as when someone leaving a room finds the doorknob come loose in his hand
Often we won't know our horizon's true distance. But as the pages turn in our calendars, we can take a compensatory pause, and reframe our focus on what we are attending to and doing with our life while we can. HAPPY NEW YEAR! Be a blessing to the lives of those around you and may you have many blessings in your life.
In Health and For Liberty,
~⚕⚜/ŝčϻ~