GOOD INTENTIONS
April 21, 2025
Excerpt from a letter to my future self penned on New Year’s Eve 2024:
“Doing the crossword puzzle I see clues like “joie de vivre” (élan), “desires” (yens), “delight” (rapture) etc. These put me to mind of words and feelings I would like to employ in 2025.”
Back in Whistler for Easter weekend I experienced a kind of Rip Van Winkle moment in which I realized that, while I’d been away for the better part of six months, things I’d left undone were still waiting to be done, and indeed some of them, like the list of resolutions for 2025 that I found in a bedside drawer, had been “undone” for longer than I care to admit!
But, I had one big win!
A bit of backstory here. For a New Year’s project our son gave each family member an envelope with a blank page inside and a quote on the outside. My envelope said “Thanks for the great adventure”. The idea was to write a note to oneself that we would then open in December of 2025 to see if the note’s intention/s had been met.
In my letter I wrote: “In Dec. ‘25 I’d like to be thanking myself for having the gusto to say yes to great adventures. Goals I set for myself in the fall of 2024 include riding in my 3rd Lavaman”…”This calls for more gusto than I have heretofore mustered since before COVID, and can’t believe I’d ever repeat the exercise [of entering the Lavaman again]. Inshallah, I’ll be able to say I did it!”
And on March 6, 2025 I actually did!
Two things bear noting here. First, as often happens when I’ve been away for any length of time, upon my return I find myself disoriented and lacking a sense of direction. Jet lag and allergies rob me of the motivation to initiate anything, even if I knew what it was I wanted to do. Coming to Whistler with a throbbing head didn’t exactly fill me with joie de vivre for celebrating Easter weekend with a dozen people. Such times call for an attitude adjustment, among other things. Otherwise I risk missing out on the fun to be had in a mildly chaotic family gathering. With no oven in which to cook anything.
Secondly, as if in answer to a need I hadn’t consciously expressed, a search for my mala in the bedside drawer turned up a duplicate of the aforementioned New Year’s letter. And, in it I found the sense of direction that had been lacking since I returned to B.C. This bears noting because it reinforces the biblical: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” that I trusted when I found myself “wandering in the wilderness” on my first few days back home.
I wish I could say that the other “yens” I recorded in my New Year’s letter were starting to gain some momentum. With the excuse of Easter weekend drawing to a close, I re-viewed the list late this afternoon. One item at least reminds me of another resolution I made last December: “I hereby commit to another 52 weeks of blogs.” Having contemplated writing my last blog to coincide with turning 75 in July, I now have to answer to my future self should I renege on this original promise. This highlights just how much more difficult it is to keep promises to myself than having to answer to other, external motivators I that talked about last Monday.
Perhaps that’s why I pepper my blog with mention of goals that otherwise might languish unaddressed until I reread my note-to-self next December. For the record, I’m going to lose those fifteen pounds I gained since COVID. I’m going to brush up on my French language skills. I’m going to be early or easily on time for my appointments. And I’m going to give others the benefit of the doubt. Including myself, when, in December next, I may or may not have ticked all those boxes.
P.S. Since it’s a bit too late to write a New Year’s Eve letter to your future self, may I suggest you write one on your next birthday, if for no other reason than to experience a facsimile of the huge lift I got from seeing that I’d done ONE BIG THING I thought I could not do.
And so can you.