I am not one for pondering too much, the misfortunes of the year past. I do tend to enjoy the promise of a New Year.
Looking back, it has been a difficult time for my family and many families I know. I have not written in this log as much as I had planned. Perhaps 2003 will see more words and actions..
I have come across some quotes that I enjoy this time of year..
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk."
-- Raymond Inmon
"We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life."
-- Carl Jung
I personally, intend to spend the last day of the year with my family and friends and, as Mark Twain said... "with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion".
NEW YEAR'S DAY
Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. To-day, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient short comings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.
[Source: reprinted in The Works of Mark Twain; Early Tales & Sketches, Vol. 1 1851-1864, (Univ. of California Press, 1979), p. 180.]
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