Savor

Happy New Year everyone! It’s that time of year where many of us choose resolutions to guide us through the new year. It’s the time for setting goals. It’s time for thinking how I can be better, thinner, healthier, and more productive in the year to come.

I’ve been there. I’m seventy. Just think how many resolutions I must have broken in seven decades! 2023 is going to be different for me. No goals. No resolutions. No pressure put upon me, by me. I’m going into the new year with a mosey, a saunter, and a meander. I’ve come across this new idea, for me, through a year of experiences and introspection.

This past year I set a goal of hiking 1000 miles. Covid kept me at 866. That pressure I put upon myself caused me frustration and sadness when I knew I wouldn’t make my goal. But, really, so what! I had fun. I hiked a lot. I’m probably healthier because of it. But if a hiker is solely focused on piling on the miles, he or she may miss things. They could miss a frog pond just off the trail. They may miss a grove of wild lilacs deeper in the woods. They could miss seeing an eagle flying across a daytime moon high above the trail. Those are things to savor.

I used to set reading goals like read a book a week for a year. But was reading a lot of books really important. To me, not really. If a reader is focused only on the number of books, he may miss some really good writing. If I am trying hurriedly to get to the next book, I may not have time to examine a particularly meaningful passage. I may not have time to think about how this writer is affecting my life with his words. I may even miss an important plot twist! But if you are like me, and believe that words are important, shouldn’t we take the time to really focus on them? Shouldn’t we savor them?

We live in a big wide wonderful world. There is so much to learn about, to see, to experience. If we are too narrowly focused, on our own goals, we could miss out on so many amazing things that this Earth offers. If we slow down, if we meander through life, many of those things will just come to us. But first we need to be open to that.

Simon and Garfunkel famously sang “Slow down, you’re moving too fast. You’ve got to make the morning last”. I am going to paraphrase and say (not sing, no one wants that) “Slow down. You’re moving too fast. You’ve got to make this lifetime last”.

This post only applies to me. If goals work for you, who am I to discourage them? But as for me, I am going to mosey, amble, and keep an open mind into 2023. And most of all, I am going to SAVOR every precious moment that I am lucky to have.