In no time at all we will find ourselves in a new year. This time, it’s 2024. While I don’t formally celebrate holidays, New Year’s Eve, the last day of the year and that blink-of-an-eye moment when a new one begins, has had heartfelt meaning for me for as long as I can remember. 

A year has been completed, and here comes a new one. 

It’s a time of reflection for me. 

New Year’s resolutions are not for me in any strict sense.  I do reflect on the biography of the year coming to an end, and I do look to identify healthy choices I can make for the new year just beginning, and then I make them. 

My instinct these past few years is to aim kindness in every direction. Kindness is void of judgment. When at its healthiest, kindness asks for nothing in return. It doesn’t have to. Seeing someone’s face relax into comfort, or someone else bursting out laughing at a joke you were lucky enough to remember, are the jewels of life for this man.

Fred Rogers was right. Be kind. Be kind. Be kind.