At the beginning of each year we think about new starts, fresh opportunities to do something or be something different--new beginnings, second chances. The blank pages of the new calendar urge us to improve. We make resolutions to be more patient, to study harder, to diet, to exercise, to be more honest with others and ourselves, and much more. For many of us the resolutions we make on the first day of January are broken by the time the week is over. New starts are necessary because we make mistakes--sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally. New starts can happen but usually only when we admit we were wrong and we are willing to change and make things right.
How can we help someone make new starts? Well, for one we can help by being forgiving. How often should we forgive? As often as need. Revenge may even the score, but forgiveness wins the game. Another way to help someone make a new start is by encouragement. People need your support, especially if they are trying to make a sincere effort to change.
A year has almost finished it's course and a new year awaits us smiling and full to the brim with twelve full months of the unknown. Sandwiched between January 1 and December 31 are twelve exciting unlived months of opportunities. Challenges brought on by changes that await us and sometimes during the year we will be shoved out of our comfort zone and required to respond. We can do so positively or negatively, with hope and optimism or with resentment and pessimism. But we need to make a decision to go forward and not look back, and by the end of 1998 I'm sure we will have discovered several wondrous things that have come our way that we never would have known or experienced had we not accepted the challenge that change inevitably brings our way. Change is good but sometimes we fear it. The only one who really likes change I guess, is a wet baby.
I've read that January is "National Prune Breakfast Month, National Oatmeal Month, and National Fiber Focus Month" . .So if you celebrate all of the above this month, I guess I know where to find you, if needed. Have a safe New Year's and a blessed and prosperous I998.