Guest Author - Guest Editor

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” - Maria Robinson

It’s 2009, can you believe it? To me it doesn’t even sound like a real year. Remember when we were kids it seemed that all of the science fiction books were set in the future and it was always 20-something, like “2001: A Space Odyssey” or that song “In the Year 2525”. The dates sound made up don’t they?

With apologies to those of you who have birthdays this month, I’ve never been a big fan of January, what with the post-Christmas blues and the unkind weather and lack of major holidays, but lately I have begun to see things differently. Now, January is a time of fresh starts and new beginnings as well as a time to say goodbye to things past.

One of the best ways I know of when it comes to changing the direction of your life is to use the power of resolution. Eric Zorn, a blogger for the Chicago Tribune, says that “making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self-assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility.” What a nice way of framing this idea. The word resolution is rooted in “solution”, so to make a resolution is to want to re-solve something, in this case, the year.

A few years ago I resolved to practice a ritual every year that would help me get on in my life. With this ritual, I say goodbye to negative leftovers by writing down all of the bad things that linger with me and, one by one, throwing them into the fireplace and watching them burn to ash. As they burn I make it a point to tell them goodbye and good riddance. I then write my hopes and plans for the upcoming year on pieces of paper, fold them up into little squares, and store them in a jar not to be seen until the end of the year.

It’s always fun to take them out and read my thoughts from so many months before. And sometimes it can be disappointing too when I see all of the things I did not accomplish. But most importantly, it puts things into perspective for me and helps me appreciate time and how I choose to use it.

If your January has started out as the same old same old and you don’t like it, take heart in our headline quote by writer Maria Robinson. None of us can change what has happened, but we sure have a say in how things end Maria wisely tells us. This year is no different.

Even if your year has gotten off to a less than stellar start, that does not mean you have to be on the same boat come December. You need not wait until New Year’s Day to do a starting-over resolution or ritual.

You can start over at any moment in your life and make a new ending for yourself. Don’t you think that this is a beautiful sentiment, and a true one, and that you deserve it? I do!

So with this blog on quotations, let us use this year together to find our way to better lives and fully realized dreams and hopes. Let us examine the words of others and glean what is meaningful to us and let that meaning guide us to the best and most important of places – to ourselves.