Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot?

I had been wondering all week what I would write to close out the old and usher in the new? What could I possibly say that hasn’t been said before? It’s the age-old ball drop at the stroke of midnight where we grab the eraser, try to wipe the slate clean of the previous year and then scribble a resolution or two whose life span will last 6, maybe 8 weeks if we’re lucky. And then it came to me as I pulled from the meat case in the grocery store a pork loin for New Years Day dinner. A text from a dear friend with just this.

And then it hit me. We become so focus on what is ahead of us that we discard everything that came before. We act like the moment, good or bad never happened. Perhaps we should be a little more careful, a little more selective when we clean the blackboard of life. We, after all, control the eraser don’t we? We hold it in our hand. We get to decide what has value. What stays and what goes. We need to build on the successes and learn how to fail forward toward our future as we live in the moment. The moment where “Today is NOT just another day with nothing going on.” So I leaned over my shopping cart and replied with the following text of my own;

“Today is not just another day.
It’s another day to be grateful we woke up, took our first breath, saw light emerge from the darkness, experienced pain so we can appreciate pleasure, sadness so we can know joy,
and see Love that covers us like a blanket extinguishing the flames of hatred.
If this weren’t enough to make this a special day then there is you in my life.
Each and every day a new day, a new opportunity to Love in all it’s forms.
To capture each moment of Time so that when Death comes for us it has nothing to take for we have given our all and there is nothing left to do but reap the eternal life that awaits. A life well lived cheats even Death. So on this last day of 2016 you are as special to me as you will be the tomorrow that dawns 2017. I love you in the truest sense of the word and Happy New Year.”

This reply was only to one but it applies to so many more friends who have touched my life in the last 365 days in a special way so I share it with them here. You know who you are and if it wasn’t clear before let me say it now with heartfelt gratitude, I love you all.