Resolutions...

The new year is here, and I'm already breaking this year's New Year's resolution which was not to make any more New Year's resolutions. Instead, this year I resolve to:

Eliminate any and all toxic relationships from my life, especially those who make themselves feel better by making me feel worse.

Stop feeling guilty for refusing to enable narcissists.

Surround myself only with life-affirming people who look at the cup as half-full and not half-empty.

Stop settling for sex when what I really want is intimacy.

Make peace with myself and recognize that, like everybody else, I have flaws and imperfections.

Try and change the things about myself that I don't like with the understanding that I can only change things about myself not others.

Come to terms with the fact that there are people in this world you can't please, no matter what, and those whose only satisfaction comes from knowing they've made you suffer almost as much as they have.

Stop mistaking the dream for the dreamer. No one person contains the truth. We are all vehicles.

Life is a gift. There are no exchanges and no returns. One who truly knows this understands that the only way to reciprocate is to serve others.

Acknowledge that, as poet William Blake said, "there is such a thing as evil" in this world as there is meanness, and there's no negotiating with either.

Affirm that which works to sustain others in healthy ways, and abstain from conversing with that which seeks its own destruction, and the destruction of others.

Never expect from others what I am not prepared to give myself.

Know that there are limits even to limits.

Embrace solitude as it is not a shadow of the soul, but the soul itself.

Understand that attachment to artificial, and largely arbitrary notions of identity ultimately means attachment to one's own mortality. Identity and mortality are inextricably linked.

Avoid stasis, and people who wallow in their own paralysis.

Feed the inner child, and absolve the free spirit.

Realize that spirit must learn to coexist with matter. Detaching the mind from the body can only lead to the decimation of both.

Get light from the flame, and not just heat.

Most of all, I resolve to become the good news I've been waiting for.