Merry Christmas!!

All of us – especially citizens of the United States – should openly express gratitude for their lives and loved ones. As a youth, Christmas was the ultimate ‘BONUS DAY’, and it was rare to reflect on its meaning. Commercially, Christmas is unchallenged for its ability to inspire good people to give generously and work, sometimes for months, to pay for that generosity. This year, things seemed to have quieted down a bit and many people are preparing to attend their first “Midnight Mass” in years. I would like to point out that a deck of cards and a book of card games is all that is necessary to make someone happy…no matter their age. Gift cards, particularly to restaurants, are very nice to receive…so long as they are not purchased with CREDIT. Avoid the ‘Credit Devil’ at all costs. New Year’s Resolution are often about weight control and very rarely about credit control. My New Year’s Resolution in 2019 was to reduce my outstanding credit to zero and by 2021, I had accomplished that. Today, I have no outstanding balances and I speak from experience when I say that I sleep well without worrying about bills. Worrying about bills to be paid has occupied far too much of my nights throughout my life. I now know that sleep is every bit as important as weight reduction to being healthy. A saying that I first heard over forty years ago is “Worrying is like a rocking chair…it will give you something to do but, it won’t get you anywhere.” I laughed hard for a good minute or two but now, there are only two sayings that I hold to be at the top of my list. That one and, Henry Ford’s, “Whether you think that you can do something or you think that you can’t do it, doesn’t matter…YOU ARE RIGHT EITHER WAY”. I live by that saying and, as a builder, I never said “No, I can’t do that” or , by extension, “No, I don’t know how to do that”. You can learn how to do anything so long as your body and your mind are healthy. If you truly embrace that idea then, a whole world of New Year’s Resolutions are available to you. You could enter a 10K this Summer; ride a bicycle around Lake Tahoe or sell a painting. One year, I took up painting. I had a large book of paintings by Norman Rockwell. I decided to paint an old man standing at the side of a frozen lake where young kids were ice skating. At University, I learned that Plato believed that all art was based in reality…reality was plagiarized. With that view in mind – and because I had no intention of selling the painting – I took an old man out of a picture that Rockwell had painted. I copied every detail, from the Red Bandana in his back jean pocket to every crease in his clothing. One day, a friend of mine came over and he happened to see my nearly complete painting. “Good Lord! Who painted that?” he asked. “I did”, I chuckled. “How much do you want for it?” he responded. I just shook my head. “I’ll give you $50 for it!”. And he did. It was certainly not about Fifty Dollars. At that point in my life $50 was insignificant. BUT…ALL THESE YEARS LATER…I CAN SAY HONESTLY THAT I HAVE SOLD A PAINTING!! There was only one skater, as the other fifteen had not been born yet. Maybe there is some great significance in that…I don’t know. So, put your mind and body to work in 2025…DO SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY! You will be glad that you did. Oh, and Merry Christmas! Be Kind and you will be Happy, Get Healthy and leave Credit far behind!