Resolutions

Winter is not my favorite season.  There are a lot of reasons:

1. It is cold!  Of course, here in Israel we really shouldn’t complain about the cold, very clear to me when I see the photos of friends all over the world sinking into two meters of snow.  But it doesn’t change the fact that I do not like the cold (yes, I know, in the heat of summer I often wish for winter to come….rationality doesn’t always come into play…), and because all forms of heating are very expensive here in Israel, I try to use as little as possible. So I use a lot of sweaters and blankets.  I have just tried using special heating socks – you put them in the micro to warm them and then they are supposed to keep your feet warm.  Well, don’t waste your money – they work for a few minutes only.  Double socks and furry house shoes are the way to go…
2. It is dark!  I am a morning person, whose morning most of the year starts at about 5 in the morning.  But when I wake up and it is pitch black outside, there is certainly no reason to get up.  The dogs still think 5 is a normal hour and start their morning running and barking, but I just can’t make myself get up to face the cold before there is at least a glimmer of dawn.  And then at 5 in the afternoon, it is already dark again!  Where has the day gone????  I really don’t know how people in the far north survive the winter with months of no daylight at all…
3. I have a birthday in the middle of the winter.  Not only am I depressed about winter itself, but added to it all, I am officially another year older!  I don’t want to think of myself as older, I would like to freeze time – but I guess I missed out on that, because I would have done it about 25 years ago…I try to ignore my birthday, but in these days of Facebook, it is impossible – there are always thousands of greetings to remind me that I am getting old, including those from people who I have never met and really don’t know who they are…
4. There is a New Year!  I have never been one to celebrate New Year’s Eve.  In Israel, it is really not an important holiday, celebrated more by the rich and famous who have the time and money for things like that, or by the very young, who are ready to celebrate anything.  Once, many, many years ago, I was in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.  It was an experience, and I have never had the slightest urge to repeat it or anything like it.  January 1 is a work day, like every other day of the year, the dogs couldn’t care less….

However, all of these depressing facts of winter do make me think.  There are so many crossroads through all these years where I could have chosen to go another way, and that would have changed my life completely.  Who knows where it would have led, what I would be doing now, with whom and where and why….

My life has never been easy, and certainly is not now.  But it has never been boring, and certainly is not now!  I have never had regrets about the road I have chosen, even though another road may have brought me an entirely different life.  There is no going back, and there is never any reason to regret things that can’t be changed.  The only way to go is forward – there are still many choices to make, each one leading in another direction…

But in the spirit of the new year, I decided to make a few resolutions:

1. Don’t expect people to be smart; appreciate the ones that are.

2. Learn to remember people’s names, not just the names of their dogs.

3. Try not to log on to FB more than five times a day.

4. Continue to believe what I see in my mind and not what I see in the mirror.

5. Take as much care about what I am eating as I do with what I feed my dogs.

6. Let my mind continue to run free and keep my mouth shut.

7. Try and stay smarter than my smart phone, and keep it functioning as a telephone, not as the manager of my life.

8. Appreciate how good my life really is.

9. Be grateful for friends, real ones, and also virtual ones, who sometimes are the best.

10.  Always be surrounded by dogs!

Happy New Year!