A Time for Everything ...

A time for everything: A time to relax and a time to be busy, a time to frolic and a time to labour, a time to receive and a time to give, a time to begin and a time to finish.

Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Recently, I received these New Year's musings from Alie, a young friend who is a student in a Masters program far from home and for whom 2012 was a year of episodic ill health, the deaths of loved ones and the ending of a love. I wish I'd been as wise as she at the age of twenty-eight:

I've never really been one for New Year's resolutions at all. And after the bust that was 2012  (for which I kinda made a a resolution for the first time ever) my aversion to this tradition is especially strong this year.

For me, right now, it's not about goals. It's not about striving to achieve a certain thing. It's about working towards something. It's not about the present and the future and some differential between the two.

It's about putting one foot in front of the other. It's about the process. It's about balance. Good and bad. Easy and hard. Happy and sad. Tired and awake. Work and play. Exercise and relaxation. Alone and social. Loud and quiet. Up and down. It's about having a bit of both, enough of each, and some of the in between.

It's not a goal to be achieved at some point in the future, but an abstract equilibrium that is acted out in every decision made.

 Balance.

Good and bad.

Happy and sad.

Balance.

'Nuff said.