More Quirky New Year's Resolutions (2012)

Every year at the end of the year my mom would remind me of the old saying that whatever you did on New Year’s Day you would do all year long.  Well, this New Year’s Day I’ll be doing something I love to do and wouldn’t mind repeating again and again — planning trips!

St. John, US Virgin Islands

I’m thinking sun and sand, blue skies and warm water, where the only ice to be found is the crushed kind that comes in a glass.  Or maybe the mountains of Mexico where it’s still possible to skip back centuries, walk cobblestone streets, and catch a few red and purple sunsets.

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

So, with travel on the agenda, I took some New Year’s Resolutions under consideration.

Looking back at my 15 Quirky New Year’s Resolutions for 2011, I realize they are still fun ideas that work for this year as well as last.  Did I do them all?  Well, I didn’t find an old lady in a big hat to befriend, but perhaps I’ll discover her this year sitting on a remote beach somewhere or walking down an ancient cobblestone street.  I’ll know her when I see her. 

Here, then, is the 2012 installment…  

More Quirky New Year’s Resolutions

1)  Experience the unknown.  This has a way of making a person feel new and — strangely — whole.

2)  Whisper.  Drink the night air.  Let the heart fly.  Be enchanted.

3)  Don’t be afraid, once in awhile, to be turned upside down and inside out.

4)  STOP moving long enough to really focus.

5)  Do as Neruda said — “set fire to life” — every now and then.

6)  Look for meaning — in dreams and in waves of loneliness, written on stones and in secret hearts, heard in the chatter of hens or tasted in the honeysuckle flower or glimpsed in a flash of lightning.  Consider it in the cluster of grapes that ripens slowly and in the lilies that bloom for only a day.

7)  Sit in the woods somewhere and lean back against a tree; touch something new, smell something new, but don’t eat the toadstools.

8)  Buy a…different sort of object — silver bells, a hanging lantern fit for a castle, gypsy feathers.  (I’ve had gypsy feathers on my “list” for a long time.  This year I’ll have to figure out what they look like and if they’re good for anything.)

9)  Keep the varmints out of the kudzu and the tigers in their dens.

10) Find my self in that pile of old pictures.

11) Aim to be as peaceful as rainwater on leaves.

12) Make someone else 10 times happy!

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