Greg Peck: Resolving to keep this message in mind in 2016
PrintIn these final days of 2015, many or most people will make New Year’s resolutions. Within days or mere weeks into the new year, most such vows are long forgotten.
I even got an email this week from a company offering a free package of prepared (“canned,” as we say in the news business) stories. Included were:
-- Helpful hints to make your money resolutions stick.
-- Ten tips to stick with your New Year’s weight loss resolutions.
-- Healthy habits to try in 2016.
-- Your smartphone can help you achieve your financial resolutions.
-- Resolve to save for travel in 2016.
-- New Year’s food resolutions to improve well-being.
You get the picture. Rather than heeding and soon scrapping any such strategies, perhaps you’ll instead consider a different perspective and outlook on life.
Earlier this year, my wife and I watched the fantasy romance movie “About Time.” Actor Domhnall Gleeson plays Tim Lake, a young man who “discovers he can travel in time and change what happens and has happened in his own life,” according to imbd.com. “His decision to make his world a better place by getting a girlfriend turns out not to be as easy as you might think.”
Rachel McAdams plays the girlfriend in question.
It wasn’t the greatest movie I’ve watched this year. In fact, while thinking about this blog at work yesterday, I couldn’t even recall the name of the movie or the two stars.
But something Tim Lake says late in the movie struck me. I thought it so profound that I typed it out and stuck it on a note above my home computer. It reads:
“The truth is, I now don’t travel back at all. Not even for the day. I just try to live every day as if I’ve deliberately come back to this one day to enjoy it as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.”
Many of us struggle with debilitating illnesses, low incomes, family strive and other problems. But compared to many places across the globe—where poverty and hunger are widespread, people lack fresh water and sanitation services, or residents fear for their lives each day—most Americans have life pretty good.
I wonder: If we kept Tim Lake’s message in mind and tried to heed it each day in 2016 and beyond, how much better might our lives be?
Greg Peck can be reached at (608) 755-8278 or [email protected]. Or follow him on Twitter or Facebook.