Lather, Rinse and Repeat. Not One Word about Stop

At the risk of disorienting you, especially on a day whose evening is usually dedicated to deliberate disorientation, I'm resurrecting some previously posted words not so much only because the last time I had an original idea it died of loneliness (though it did; the funeral is Thursday) but I think they bear repeating.

I said-oh, I hadn't realized you were nodding in agreement rather than off. Color me embarrassed. Use the whole crayon.

This is the day, December 31, I always get wrong. Do I look back at everything I failed at this past year or failed to attempt and accomplish? That look back takes care of both the sins of Commission and Omission Father Costello used to warn us about in those excruciating lectures he offered after Mass on First Fridays at St. Peter's Church before we walked back up to school (and we'd endure anything rather than head back. Except his homilies).

My other choice for today is to look forward, but to what and how far? Should I be preparing to celebrate a cure for the heartbreak of psoriasis or having a fruit cup with thick syrup? Don't trivialize my choice of alternatives, okay? But feel free to see them as a cautionary tale for yourself if not tonight then at some future time.

Do you make resolutions and what are their subjects? I stopped a long time ago, before I met my wife, before we had our children (technically, she had them) and before we came to the Land of Round Doorknobs.

The only resolution I can recall ever making, and the one I encouraged our two children to also make and to keep, is to do the best I can do everyday. I'd suggest you be the same and do likewise and I don't care what it is you do, or don't.

We spend too much time every day interacting with people who did us a favor showing up, be it for work or for whatever else the event is. If you have zero passion or reason for doing or being what you are, where you are, spending any amount of time with you is too much work for me with far too little return. In the year that gets here on little cat's feet in less time than it takes to tell you about it, promise to never be that person, never.

The only thing each of us has the power to change is our self. And every day has new chances to do that. We own that choice and we own the  consequences for what we do, or what we choose to NOT do..

Be an exclamation, and not an explanation.
Live out loud and at the top of your voice as more than one person I know is fond of saying. Be happy you are here, because you are but a short time here and long time gone, and make sure the rest of us are thrilled about your presence as well.

Leave nothing undone and even less unsaid.
Each of us knows someone (or more than one someone) who departed from us in the course of this year and there are words still lodged in our throat we never said because we thought we thought we had time to say them. We were wrong, and that's part of being human-being wrong and traveling on.

I hope whoever they were, they were so marvelous and amazing that we shall always feel their absence and miss them for all of our days. Make it a point tonight to toast absent friends, accepting that all of this is a part of all of that and that our dance continues even as partners change because they must.
The same procedure this year? The same procedure as every year.
-bill kenny