To new beginnings

The fact that it is the second day in a new year is incredible becuase it is a day that isn't "just another day." It is only the second day of the year 2007. There's plenty of time to make a plan, do good things -- and to screw up in the process. But the amazing thing is that we have time -- at this point about 363 days of doing things consciously, with a mission, as though we mean it and want it with all our heart and soul. I just got back from NYC yesterday evening after a gruelling 7 hour journey through crazy traffic and rain in a crowded Chinatown bus. I spent the weekend with old friends, made new friends, and feel thoroughly invigorated, yet tired from the shopping, schlepping and drinking. For all of you who are sharing with me this bonus day off (thank you President Ford), the slate is clean and waiting to be written upon. It's sad on the one hand that the long stretch of good food and drinks shared with close friends and family is really winding down. But now we have this day wide open to us to redact all the stupid time wasting foolish things we did in 2006 and write out what we want to do this new year.

Resolutions are not hokey if we write them out. It just may be three things -- here's mine -- do 20 minutes of yoga followed by 10 minutes of meditation at least three times a week, get on the treadmill at least three times a week, WRITE, go on one backpacking trip by June 2007, and find a job that does not require sitting in a cube. Oh well, that was five things, but what the hell!

I'm signing off with this poem from Rabindranath Tagore, Asia's first Noble laureate, and inspiration for no less a visionary than Gandhiji:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Cheers to a happy 2007 to you all!