Fresh Starts and New Beginnings

I’m typing quietly in case you were a little too boisterous in bidding farewell and good riddance to the old year last night and because I’ve learned that when you’re confronted with a blank page, as we are here today on this first day of 2020, to choose your words more carefully because words become actions and sometimes, all too quickly, actions become habits. 

There's something about a blank sheet of paper, newly-fallen snow that no one has yet walked on, that 'new car' smell and the feel of a newborn's skin on your fingers. And all of those feelings add up to today as we begin a(nother) New Year.

Welcome to Day One. We can go anywhere and do anything. We just have to decide. 

I’ll start. Did you make resolutions? And have you already broken one or more of them? It’s okay, I don't think the Guinness Records people keep track so you can safely claim whatever you wish and however you will. Of course, escaping your own judgment will be harder to do since you know best your own tricks and traps.

I have intentions, not resolutions. I intend this year to be a better person to the people already in my life and to whom I have been less than kind. I’m not always going to succeed in that but I’ll try (my wife tells me I’m the most trying man she has ever known so that’s a start, right?). I'm not going to allow the past to color the future and recognize I cannot be forgiven for sins I've not yet committed.

We had no way of knowing this time last year how the year would play out and perhaps it's just as well that we didn't know what we didn't know. The same is true again, of course, and as always so I suspect all we can do is all we can do and luck and love will have to help.

Norwich, Connecticut, where I live is 360 years old and I'm not sure those of us from here, and those of us who now live here, are quite done being here. Yet. While every day of our city’s past is important, those days pale in comparison to what we make of the ones before us, to include the next 366 days of this new year so I hope not just on this first day but every day we’ll spend more than a moment contemplating and planning where we go next.

In 2020, I believe we should promise one another to live beyond our dreams. What would happen if the notion of 'this is the very best I can do' became the baseline for our efforts, with our families, with our vocations and avocations and our interactions with one another? 

I don’t pretend we'd succeed all the time, or even half the time—but we wouldn't have to. Succeeding just once a day would raise the bar for our tomorrow and for every day afterward. So, let’s start today resolving to do and to give one our best to one another. 
Let’s go.
-bill kenny