This Breath

There are moments throughout a given year that we become more aware of time and the passing thereof. For me, it is birthdays and the dawning of a new year. I don’t know if it’s so much awareness, maybe I used the wrong phrase, but we are compelled to acknowledge that we are getting older, and time is both precious, finite, and fleeting.

With birthdays it’s friends and family who insist on reminding you that you are one year closer to your expiration date, with candles, balloons, and cake, all seeming to mock your slow but noticeable decline. After about forty, I didn’t need a cake or candles to tell me I was getting older, I could feel it in my joints, and see it in the wrinkles on my face.

The passing of a year does collectively what the birthday reminder does individually. We collectively acknowledge that another year has come and gone, that we will nevermore relive the moments we did, or be able to redeem the ones we wasted.

We all react differently to the passing of a new year. For some people, it’s a day like any other, and if they have seniority or didn’t draw the short straw a day off work. For others, it is a new chapter, a fresh start, a reason to resolve to do all the things they failed to do the previous year, to be a better person, to read more, to complain less, and maybe, just maybe use that five-year-old treadmill as something more than a clothes hanger.

Then some use these momentous days as nothing more than a reason to procrastinate and put off what they ought to have been doing all along. If it’s mid-March, and you put off something you know you ought to be doing until January 1^st just because you think a resolution will make you stick to your plan, all you’re really doing is using a delay tactic. I know the mindset, and I’ve been guilty of it on occasion.

No, I haven’t put off something I ought to have been doing for nine months just because of a new year, but there have been plenty of times when it was a Tuesday, or a Friday, and I delayed starting an exercise plan or a diet until the next Monday, you know because that would increase the chances of success or something along those lines.

The older I get the more I am aware of the importance of now. This breath is all we have, and nothing beyond it is guaranteed. This breath is all we have, and though we may make plans, and resolve to do great things at some point in the future, when the kids are grown, or when the house is paid off, in reality, such plans are nothing more than wishful thinking.

What will we put off for tomorrow that we could have done today? What will we wait another year to resolve to do that could have been accomplished now? If you start today, imagine how much further along you will be than the person who will find a reason to procrastinate yet another year.

Whether welcomed with joy, or indifference, a new year is upon us, and each of us is responsible for what we do with it. Happy New Year!

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.