2007 Resolutions

3. Forgive
2. Stop Being Such a Grown-up
5. Celebrate
4. Be at Peace
1. Be Happy

My advice to you:
We’ve all been told “if you set your mind to it you can achieve anything”. Lies, all lies. I’ll never be a ballerina. I did take a couple of years of ballet before my mother had to come to terms with my lack of coordination. I knew from the first class that I wasn’t suited for ballet and I was only 5 years old. Find what you are suited for and plan how to achieve it.

I just started listing what I want for myself this year, hence the out of order numbering. I had to think about each one and ask myself, “What am I suited for?”

I am suited for happiness.

I’ve put hours into this one. In the shower shampooing my hair, stuck in rush hour traffic, mulling over how and why in those shadowy moments before sleep takes me. I don’t believe I deserve to be happy but after I examined “happiness”, I do think I am suited to be happy.

For most of my life I’ve confused pleasure with happiness. I got pleasure from ice cream but it never made me happy. I thought it made me happy but afterward I was definitely unhappy. So I ate ice cream again… so I could be happy.

True happiness can be sustained beyond the thing that produces it. I don’t enjoy disciplining my girls but the lasting effect is happiness when I see the results. I think in my earlier years sex was about pleasure, in the moment, feel good pleasure (like ice cream but better). But I’m learning, year by year, that love is about happiness, that feeling which is sustained beyond the act.

I think if I master #1, the rest of the list will fall into place.