New Years Resolutions Revisited

Shifting word-processing files around in preparation for changing computers, I spotted once called "Column 2019 01 01 - New Years' Resolutions" -- a column I'd published in the Las Cruces Sun-News and elsewhere at the start of this year.  I wondered whether revisiting it might be worth a column in January 2020.  It's at least a blog post, with the year-old column in regular-type and the comments bold-faced:

In 2019, I will be more mindful, contemplative, grateful, and kind.

Mindfulness? Hitting a tennis ball, I know to keep my head down as long as possible. Driving, I try to be aware of everything around me, and how fast it's moving.

Can I manage that same mindfulness in all that I do? Be as wholly present washing dishes or watering the vegetables as I am playing ball? 

I get a pretty mixed report card on this one.  I'd give myself a C, maybe a B-.  I still aspire to improve -- even as the passing years augur a decline in my capabilities.  

Contemplation is good, both for itself and for its results – although best when I neither seek nor even envision “results.” The gift is to stop for a moment: stop doing, saying, planning, resenting. Just be. Breathe. Stopping the rush, externally and internally, creates space for an insight, a memory, even a poem to wander in. It frees me to appreciate what I really like or enjoy, or hear what may be crying out for change, inside or around me.

I manage this at times -- mostly out back in our garden, or occasionally when waiting for someone in a coffeehouse.  Often the "product" is a haiku or tanka.  

But too often I am too intent on everything else I'm doing -- newspaper columns and the radio versions, occasional legal issues, fiction-writing, a great deal of pickleball, doing two radio shows on KTAL (a Sunday one, discussing people's faith or non-faith, which last year I began sharing with Stuart Kelter, a capable host who hosted it on alternate weeks, and which in 2020 will be replaced by Stuart's new show, "Delving In"; and a two-hour show Wednesdays ("Speak Up, Las Cruces!") with co-host Walt Rubel.  Starting in February 2020, I think, (1) Walt will take the lead, with me often participating in interviews and only occasionally arranging them, and (2) we'll often do the show for just an hour, 8-9, rather than the 8-10 we've been doing for 2 1/2 years.     

Gratitude is important. That dawned on me even before the current slew of books, articles, and studies telling us gratitude is good for us. In 2019 I will be more grateful – even “blessed,” without feeling any particular need to figure out by whom or by what. Not just because feeling and expressing gratitude is healthy, but because so much demands my gratitude.

Gratitude IS important.  I do feel grateful.  If this was a resolution, I've done fairly well; but can take no credit.  I FEEL grateful, often; but the fact that I also THINK I should is mostly coincidental.  I don't feel grateful because of any resolution, or any act of will, but because -- despite pain and suffering, and death, and political rancor, and news cycles full of Donald Trump, the life around me induces feelings of gratitude.  Whether all those negative observations about the world undermine my gratitude or fuel it, or both, is a question for another day.

I am grateful for – well, above all, my wife. I lack space to list all that we share and laugh about, and all that she teaches me.

I am grateful for: the Organ Mountains, especially at sunset or in snow; our caring, thoughtful Congresswoman, Xochitl Torres-Small; many wonderful coffee houses and other local businesses that deserve our support; the more tolerant spirit I hope to feel among us, perhaps because we are seeing clearly where acrimony and hyper-partisanship lead; the surprising courtesy Las Cruces drivers extend to us as we bicycle about town; KTAL 101.5 FM (Las Cruces Community Radio) and KRWG; our deep well of talented artists, poets, and musicians; our community; Arturo Flores, 100, a WWII vet and courageous labor leader, who died this week (I'm grateful that we had him so long, and for his fine family and his influence on his many friends); people who read and respond to these columns; my invigorating poetry workshop; Bob Diven and Mark Medoff (who, sadly, is no longer with us, except through his creative work and his wonderful family; and in the many grateful memories of him in so many hearts or minds, including mine); the talented, tireless growers and craftspeople at the Saturday Farmers' Market; Camp Hope; our longstanding local theater groups, movies at the Fountain, and the Las Cruces Symphony; good health; and the abandoned Doña Ana County Courthouse, haunted by memories of this long-haired young newspaper reporter. (With its adobe walls, it looked great in this week's snow.)  (Again we've seen a little snow in the year's final week, but just a light dusting on the mountains.)  

I should have included gratitude for pickleball (and the great folks who play it here), Planet Fitness (where I lift weights less often than I should, but more than I used to), and the NMSU pool, because all three activities, and the folks I see there, have a great effect on my mood and well-being.

I'm also grateful for a sense of wonder, which children (like great-grandson Teddy) and snow restore to me when I misplace it.

If I were making real “Resolutions” they'd include being more kind (doing some unexpected good turn for someone each day), of course, but also: wonder often; and do only what I can do with joy. That last is tough. But I guess if I can't choose only activities that spark joy, I need to find what joy there is in all that I must do. And, last, I will not judge others, let alone complain about the speck in their eye without first dealing with the beam in mine.

Finally, gratitude to Bear, our esteemed cat, who helps me sit up straight by occupying most of the chair from which I scribble this.  (Sadly, this was Bear's final year on Earth.  We miss him.  I remain grateful for him -- but am also sort of grateful that Foxy, a red-heeler mix, has shared our life for a few months now.)  A couple of recent tanka and a haiku:

                                                               The old red heeler
                                                               stretches and yawns, dreaming she’s           

                                                               herding the cattle,
                                                               fearlessly nipping at hooves,
                                                               at home in the vast outback.

red dog above ground,
black cat’s bones decay below.
I write of the dog,
but the cat helped with poems,
had that taste for mystery. 

most recently:

                                  dog's head in my lap

                           she knows only this moment --

                                  i am still learning

Happy New Year!

Yep! Happy New Year!  Have one, please! I suspect we each have more influence over how our year goes than we suppose we do.

                                                   -30- 

Since this is a blog-post, not a newspaper column, I can include some resolutions:

(1) to treat my opponents in pickleball and political debate better;

(2) to lift every other day; 

(3) to take contemplative time daily;

(4) to weigh under 160 pounds;

(5) to show my wife how much I love her;

(6) to give something meaningful (not just a quarter, and not necessarily just financial) to a stranger at least every week in 2020;
(7) to publish the novel The Garden Journal, a book that purports to be the diary or journal of a 32 -year-old woman living in Oakland, California, in 1914.