"New Year's Day--Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever."
--Mark Twain
For the romantic in me:
"As a new year begins and we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead and remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives."
--Jeffrey R. Holland
And, I don't know; they are both smart men, but I cannot help but side with Holland this year. Last year, when I made no resolutions, I would have celebrated the frailty of men with Twain. But this year things feels different. I guess I am just feeling a little bit hopeful, a little bit faithful, and more than a little excited about my future.
My resolutions have been considered, made, and written down.
2010, I think I am finally ready for you.
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