Lentils and ham for dinner today. Home-made cheeseball to accompany the New Years Feast. It rained all day and now the thermometer is dropping precipitously. Aaron and I watched a Horror Film…that we still are trying to decipher. Jonathon and I put the Christmas decorations back into their Christmas Closet. Aaron helped MJ with dinner. If the holidays teach me anything…they teach that life is short. When I reflect on Christmas past…they seem like yesterday. Christmas is a Station in our earthly travel. A time to remember and a time to plan for the future. Time to take stock of what seems to be a random set of occurrences and circumstances…when you are experiencing them…but in reality, they make up the fabric of your life.

Colder temperatures will come as a shock to the many who have received significant tornado damage to their homes…especially in Mayfield, Kentucky. I saw a man with many rags and blankets attempting to sleep in a doorway in Carbondale. When you see the homeless…it is difficult to conceive how horrible it is to Sleep Rough…as the English refer to homelessness. We have been experiencing unseasonably warm temperatures most of December…now the full force of winter in Southern Illinois is coming…tonight.

It has been said that to continue to do the same things and to expect different results…is a form of insanity… 2022 can be a year of change for each of us. The change will be all around us and it will demand our attention and our time and our talents. If we can have a spirit of change…we will be much happier with what the New Year brings us. We can accept responsibility for our actions in the New Year. The Change that we want to occur in ourselves…is our responsibility. Another human is never going to take the interest in you that you naturally have in yourself. Your failure is usually your primary responsibility and your success is attributed to your hard work and sweat and determination.

Visualization…helps in the achievement of goals. If you can see yourself firmly in the place or position or succeeding in the goal that you have set for yourself…it will be achieved. There is an old saying that ‘Rome was not built in a day,’ and neither will our goals be achieved in a day. Success is incremental. You do not fail overnight…and you do not succeed…overnight.

Happiness comes from the continued pursuit of excellence. I wonder if many marriages fail due to each partner having unrealistic expectations of the happiness that their partner is going to bring them. Usually what you work at in endeavoring to make another happy…will come back to you… Karma