Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week. – Charles Richards
2014 did not end on a great note as I suffered a personal loss in the form of the death of a loved one. Death is inevitable, and a painful reality of life, but every time it hits us with a force that we didn’t even know existed. If there is any universal truth, it is the fact that all who are born, must die, and yet, death is the farthest thing from our minds when we are busy living our lives.
This post, however, is not about death and endings. It is about beginnings. Things must end, so that new beginnings can be made. Just like 2014 had to end, so that 2015 could begin.
Time, as a concept, is difficult to comprehend. We all have the same 24 hours of time in day, but many of us manage to achieve a lot more in this time than others. Let’s take a look at a few things that we feel about time:
Most of us feel that they we do not have enough time.
Most of us want to start doing the right things, but from tomorrow.
A lot of things in our lives get done in the last minute.
The last minute isn’t any longer than any other minute, yet we manage to do a lot in that time. The tomorrow we hope for never comes, and as for the amount of time you have, no one could have said it better than H. Jackson Brown Jr. when he said that, “you have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
What you do with the time you have is a choice that only you can make.
I have this habit of making resolutions, that most often than not I fail to keep. Yet, every year, without fail, I make a list of resolutions that I try to keep for as long as I can. Here is my list of resolutions for 2015:
1. Read more: Last year I had set a target of reading 120 books in the year. I guess I do not have to tell you that I did not manage to read even half as many. But, what I did realise was that reading 120 books in an year is doable, and, therefore, I have decided to raise the bar and set a target of reading 135 books in 2015.
2. Focus on Health: A healthy mind can only reside in a healthy body. So, a focus on maintaining a healthy body is on the top of my list for 2015. The idea is to stay fit by focusing on exercise and diet. I will need to work on the specifics, but the basic idea is to give a conscious thought to the staying fit, as I go about living my life.
… and that’s it. Unlike previous years when I used to make a long list of resolutions, this year I have decided to take a different approach and focus on two specific issues, which I hope will affect the other aspects of my life positively. Anyway, if I am able to stick to my resolutions, reading is going to be taking up a lot of my time in 2015.
What are your new year resolutions?
What do you think?