New Year’s Day

The beginning is a time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct, said the Princess Irulan, in her biography of Muad’Dib; a small miscalculation at the outset, any deviation from the plan no matter how subtle, will cause you to miss your mark by a wide margin.

Today is a day for beginnings, for taking a single step that establishes the trajectory of countless footsteps we will tread and the unnumbered hours that make up our years.

Do not allow your consideration of this cautionary note to deter you from your end or, get you to a place that you did not intended to be in. Therefore, great care must be taken at the beginnings of things…be mindful of your aim.

 Today is a day of resolutions.

 Doing is being, as Ray Bradbury said:

To have done is not enough

One cannot lay about, and lie about the things we might just do someday

but do, to win the game

Great things are accomplished (and by great I mean great in any sphere: socially, professionally, personally, spiritually, privately), great things are arrived at, built, discovered by slinging together a series of small-regular and consistent actions, so minute that they are less noticeable than the growth of your fingernails.

 It is by the steady application of effort that we learn to do, and thereby that we can do just about anything…we can walk through fire, we can breathe underwater, have danced on the face of the moon.

 If you resolve to do something this year; be resolute in your determination, take proper account of your situation, see your target and steady your aim…keep this in mind: getting there is less important than the going.

 If life is a river, it is a confluence of contradictions; the journey you are taking may require that you throw yourself into the river’s current if you wish to arrive at your destination; do so knowing that the process is more important than the goal.

 Be mindful.

 The archer is not only concerned with the object of her aim but with the drawing of her bow, with the tension in the string, with her distance to the target and the flow of the wind.

 Prepare yourself to understand these variables, attenuate yourself to them…for they are always changing.

 Make 2026 a year in which hope for the future of America and her promise does not seem absurd, extend that hope to the entire world…365 days from now, hope may be all there is.

 Compassion and accountability, charity and honesty, integrity and humility…justice: call for these; demonstrate your desire for them through the life you lead and listen for those in need of them…they are weeping in the wilderness of fear and uncertainty…be a shield for them.

 If you see something, say something

 Today is the first day, it is a day for unity and common purpose.

 Today is a day of beginnings, a day for resolutions, a day for reflection and for joy.

 Today we stand on the fulcrum of a lever, we are poised (as always) between past and future, looking forward toward our hopes as we consider the sum of our failures: war and famine, disease and ruin, all the result of our collective strivings…let each thing fall into its proper place like stepping stones you lay before you while you move toward your desired end.