The First Morning of the New Year – 2016

Things I Learned A Long Time Ago That Continue To Hang With Me

• Change happens – resilience, and finding a way to dance through it with as little resentment or resistance as possible, reduces anxiety and increases happiness.
• Imagining oneself as an agent of change is better than imagining oneself as a victim of change.
• Keeping accessible the knowledge that we are only imagining any role we have in the universe is crucial to recovery and healing when things go badly.
• If you can’t enjoy one drink of alcohol without being bothered to think about another one for a week or ten days, or until a coincidental occasion warrants it – in other words, if it’s not something that is just there and you can take it or leave – you’re using it not drinking it.
• Pot is a numbing agent; and contrary to wishful thinking, can become a dependency.
• Numbing oneself leads to depression, and probably more often than depression leads to numbing.
• Perspective is always just that; and re-framing our perspective is always possible, usually helpful, and generally necessary for any good outcome.
• Life is not a morality play; the people that told us that, and the ones who live like that, are trying to control themselves, you, or someone else.
• Every decision we make is a choice, but no decision we make is as unencumbered or free as we pretend it is. Choices are always connected to and influenced by other people in the past, present, and/or future.
• Hope is a decision.

Things I May Have Learned In The Last Ten Years

• Sugar is to lick or taste now and again, nothing to do with hunger.
• The 50’s are or were hard on most people I know well.
• Goals are better for dreaming about or working toward than they are for living.
• Having an oak tree outside your window makes winter more fun.
• Talking to a tree up close and personal helps you form a relationship with it – doing so does not make you a crazy person.
• Most of the things I have done that people say they admire, I stumbled into or was unaware I was doing until it was done.
• Death is not something I need to be afraid of even though I have no idea what or if there is any kind of existence beyond it.
• Working out is never going to be fun for me; and somehow, for some nasty reason, exercise is the one thing in all of life that I will never run the risk of being compulsive about.

New Things I Am Still Learning

• I can write poetry.
• Being a writer is hard work but not as hard as being on your feet all day.
• Getting published requires grit.
• Being published is just the beginning, and it is an entirely different job than being a writer.
• I am not a writer; I am a preacher who is greedy and wants to write more than sermons.
• Writing poetry, good or not, helps every other kind of writing I do.

Things I Don’t Want to Learn But Have A Niggling Feeling I Need To

• Unless or until I am a much better writer, and a more successful one, I need to live within the conventions. (That may be true in life as well).
• If the dog is happy and content, I will be happy and somewhat content.
• If the chickadees flitting around my yard can make it through winter so can I.
• I am not as grateful as I should be; nor as amazed as I ought to be.