New Year’s resolutions are pretty much a joke. Ask anybody if they made any, and they’ll either outright laugh or state some unrealistic platitudes that Mother Theresa would have had trouble achieving. But what New Year’s IS good for is reflecting over the past year and the state of one’s life overall.

2003 was a good year for me. My family and I were relatively healthy again, plus we were comfortable and overall happy. Speaking for myself, I enjoyed both my job and my extracurricular activities. Writing and reading are important parts of my life, and I could not imagine being happy and fulfilled without them. In fact, I am a firm believer that in order for one’s life to be complete, a person needs some “passion” otherwise life consists of nothing more than duties and wasted time.

Like most people, I have a tendency to whine occasionally (“I don’t feel well” “I’m overworked” “I have no time for my writing”), but when I look at the states of many of my friends and correspondents, I realize that I have no right to complain about ANYTHING. I have one friend whose wife is so terminally ill that he MUST be at her side 24/7, having no time for anything except being her nursemaid. I have another friend who had an operation to remove a malignant brain tumor which the surgeon could not remove totally, so now he is having radiation treatment and chemotherapy in HOPE that the tumor is gone. I know several people ranging in age from recent high school graduates to middle-aged who feel unloved, unfulfilled, insecure, and stressed out.

I don’t suffer from any of those complaints. My life, and that of my family, is good right now, and has been good for many years. If nothing else, the advent of a new year gives me the opportunity to reflect on that situation, and appreciate it a bit more than I probably do on a daily basis.