We’re three weeks into 2018, and I suspect most New Year’s resolutions have already fallen by the wayside. My personal traditions as we transition from one year to the next have always been pretty low key.
I’ve rarely attended New Year’s Eve parties. I’m usually asleep by the time the clock strikes midnight. I’ve never watched a complete Rose Parade. And I seldom make any serious resolutions that might lead to changes in my life.
This year was no different. For the last few week, though, I have been doing what I do every year in late December and early January – reflecting on the fleeting nature of life. Words from one of the ancient Psalms provide a sobering guide for doing that. “All our days come to an end like a sigh. Seventy years is all we have – 80 years if we are strong – yet life is soon over and we are gone. Teach us how short our life is so that we may become wise . . . so that we might sing and rejoice all our lives.”
The truth of those words becomes more evident each year, with the realization that each January arrives more quickly than the last one. But rather than this being a depressing thought, I’d like to suggest that it can be a truth that leads us to greater wisdom. And if there’s a New Year’s resolution in all this, it would be to recognize that every day is filled with opportunities to help someone, to cheer or encourage someone, to share friendship, to make a positive contribution in the lives of people.
One of my sons taught me that truth when he was too young to know that’s what he was doing. I came home one evening after a long, tiring day, and our 4-year-old greeted me with two new books from the library.
“Will you read me a book?”
“Not now,” I said, “I just got home.”
“Just one,” he begged. “Please!”
“I’m too tired,” I replied. “Maybe after supper.”
Four-year-olds don’t forget. An hour later he was back. “Read me this book, Daddy.”
I looked at the thick book with big pages and at the newspaper in my hand. “I want to read the paper,” I said. “You go look at the pictures.”
As my son walked away, I heard him sigh and say, “But I already know the pictures!”
And suddenly it hit me. How often would I say no to him and then discover that he’d stopped asking me to read to him? How many times could I turn him away and still expect him to come to his dad with his troubles, his requests, his thoughts? How often could I put him at the bottom of my list of things to do and then still convince him of my love for him and his value as a person? How long would he stay four years old?
We read the book that night . . . and then another one.
Now, in the blink of an eye, our three sons are suddenly all in their 40s and 50s. Five of our seven grandchildren are well beyond the “read this book to me” age.
Psalm 90 is true. “Teach us how short our life is so that we may become wise.” Wise enough to know that today is the day for visiting that neighbor we’ve been meaning to sit down with. Today is the day for writing that letter we’ve been putting off. Today is the day for restoring that broken relationship. Today is the day for correcting that bad habit. Today is the day for saying, “I love you” or “I appreciate you.”
Realizing and doing that might just put a bit of singing and rejoicing in your life in 2018!
Keith Tomlinson is a retired Kaukauna resident. He can be reached at katvlt@yahoo.com.