Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. Happy New Year. Happy New Decade (depending on how you count). That special kiss at midnight. Yes, 2009 was a rough year, and 2010 is starting off great. It seems like that is often the case for any new beginning.

I remember the beginning of 2009, the jubilation about the election of Barack Obama as President; the inauguration, the discussions with friends. Yet as the year progressed, life, and death, got in the way. One friend lost his battle with Leukemia. Another who had welcomed 2009 with so much joy and enthusiasm started her battle with Leukemia and didn’t live to see the end of the year. One friend tragically lost her brother. Many people struggled financially, and it seemed like our political process ground to a halt as some people obstructed any efforts to make our country better, or even wished for the failure of our country and its leader.

I remember back at a freshman orientation in college, the head of the college counseling center telling the assembled class that many people come to college intent on turning over a new leaf, and then, soon, fall back into the same old habits. It seems that the same is the case for New Year’s resolutions. We come into the New Year with high hopes, only to have life get in the way.

In an email that I received from a political organizer today, she suggested setting goals. People break resolutions, yet they achieve goals. An email from a psychologist observed that every moment is the opportunity for a new beginning, and while it is great to join with others on making new beginnings on New Year’s Day, we can make a new beginning any day.

This leads me back to another story I remember from college. A student had gone on some school sponsored trip, making a pilgrimage to the cathedrals from Paris to Santiago. He came back a changed man and spoke at alumni gatherings about his experience. At the end of one such gathering, an elderly alumnus stood up and shook his finger at the young man saying, “You know what’s wrong with you? You don’t have any goals.”

The young man replied, “No, I have one goal, to live each moment more fully and more lovingly than the previous”. This isn’t the sort of concrete goal that my political organizer friend had in mind, but it is a great goal, and it captures some of the idea of my psychologist friend about every moment being an opportunity for a new beginning.

Another story I remember from the professor that told me about the student and the pilgrimage was in an aesthetics course when he made a comment about “museum runners”; those people who quickly move through the museum, pausing a predetermined amount of time in front of famous pictures, but perhaps not really seeing anything at all. It seems like this fits in with the young pilgrims story. To live more fully, we need to slow down. We need to appreciate the beautiful snow outside, even though we know that our commute might be more difficult tomorrow. Who knows, if we manage to stop for a moment and appreciate the beauty in our lives around us, if we perhaps even manage to contribute a little bit to that beauty, then we have a good chance of also living a little bit more lovingly.

So, I will spend time worrying about where the next paycheck comes from. I will struggle with my writing, my politics, my technology, my marketing, my education, my socializing and all the other things that go into this blog. Yet most importantly, I will try to slow down, to just say no to museum running and trying to live each moment more fully and more lovingly than the previous.

How about you? What will 2010 bring? I hope it brings a Happy New Year.