New Proverbs for the New Year

Life in the Boomer Lane isn’t a fan of New Year’s Resolutions. It’s too easy to imagine losing 20 lbs as one stuffs oneself at the endless Thanksgiving-to-New Year’s Eatathon. Or to imagine going to the gym every day as one spends the entire month moving from table to couch to bed.  Instead, LBL prefers to start the new year by simply trying to see things in a new way. After all, we create our own reality, right? So, because of that, LBL is thinking about creating her very own proverbs for the New Year, based on well-known existing ones:

1  One should always look a gift horse right in the mouth. LBL sometimes has trouble with this one. She often forgets to say thank you at the tiniest of niceties that people bestow.  As the residents of the planet become ever more materialistic, self-focused and willing to fabricate their actions as benefitting others, when the exact opposite is true, true gift horses are even more precious. They must be looked directly in the face and acknowledged.

2. Don’t always look before you leap.  LBL thinks that, sometimes, her best leaping is accomplished when she doesn’t actually look first. It’s  called trust:  in herself, in others, in the universe. She admits that a certain amount of that results from sheer ignorance, but, luckily, the world has interpreted such ignorance as courage. LBL, for her part, has changed jobs, professions, and started a business and a radio show, pretty much on sheer faith. She hopes to continue the trend in 2018.

3. You can teach an old dog new tricks. Just do it more slowly.  While LBL has no solid evidence that this is so, she certainly hopes it is. What she does know is that, at this age, doing something she has never done before gives her the same kind of thrill that others might experience when they reach the  summit of a mountain or go zip lining in Costa Rica. Unless technology is involved, LBL will keep learning new tricks.

4. Still waters can run mighty shallow.  LBL has learned this via personal experience. As the years spool out, she simply doesn’t have the time left to deal with people who don’t show a depth of awareness about themselves and the world. She does make an exception for people who crack her up, but those who are both shallow and hilarious are few and far between.

5. Sometimes, it’s good to put the cart before the horse.  LBL is old enough so that she does, sometimes, start with dessert. Or she buys that great item of clothing before she loses the pounds. She is oten known to blow dry her hair before washing her face (Her hair usually being her first priority). The universe doesn’t seem to mind any of this. And it gives the poor horse a needed break.

6. Great minds don’t all think alike.  If they did, the world would not only be insanely boring, but insanely one-dimensional. The current political climate aside, in normal times, great minds would run the gamut of political, philosophical, and artistic thought. They would bring a vast variety to the table of knowledge.  LBL would rather talk to a sane, rational, learned person she disagrees with than a strident, irrational, liberal person who she agrees with. She’ll learn something from the first one. Not so much from the second.

7. If, at first, you don’t succeed, you better take a hard look at what you are attempting.  There’s a great saying about the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. LBL’s take is that, while the goal may be constant,  you’d better change something about your attitude, your methods, or your expectations.  Otherwise, please find a different goal.

8. A lot of apples fall quite far from the tree. Thank goodness.  While we are a genetic mix of our parents, ultimately, we have a choice about the way we will lead our lives. LBL loved her parents, but she believes either one of them would be dumfounded to see the choices she has made for her own life.

9. The way to a man’s heart is not through his stomach. It’s through another part of his anatomy. Tricked you, here. It’s not his penis. It’s his brain. If LBL can’t reach a man that way, she’s not interested.

10. Sometimes, what goes around, doesn’t always come around. It gets stuck out there, somewhere. With all due respect to the notion of karma and of ultimate reward or punishment at the Pearly Gates, sometimes, very bad people who wield lots of power will simply eventually expire without any kind of comeuppance either in this life or any other.  And the reverse is true, as well. Good people who live good lives will expire without rewards in either this life or any other.

LBL does the best she can in life, without expecting earthly reward. She has her own idea of the afterlife which doesn’t conform to conventional thought.  Personally, she prefers to do good deeds and avoid bad deeds, simply because she feels most powerful when she is creating positive energy here on earth. And, being a positive force seems like a swell way to live. After she is gone, the universe can decide what to do with her. She’s pretty neutral about it all.