New Year’s Resolutions for 2012

It is that time of the year again, where we spend the week after Christmas taking back and exchanging all the gifts from relatives and friends we did not want; continue to “party” because we might have a few more days off from work; clean up our Christmas decorations, and for some of us, we spend this last week of the year thinking about our New Year’s Resolutions that will be set into motion on the first day of the new year.

For most of us, we think about:

• Reducing our consumption of food
• Implementing an exercise regimen
• Reducing or stopping smoking
• Stop using a credit card
• Brush our teeth longer and more regularly
• Start attending Church
• Stop using drugs and alcohol

And, the list goes on and on, but is usually about what we want to change about self because and as the thinking goes, we cannot change others, but we can ourselves.  While this is true in part and perhaps in theory, we can change others or at least make the attempt. 

So, here is what I would like to have as my New Year’s Resolutions:

1. An end of world hunger
2. An end to our planet’s destruction
3. A world health initiative
4. Collective sharing of the world’s amateur art
5. Global brotherhood
6. Acceptance of the world’s religions and spiritual philosophies
7. Increase in global commerce

Some or even many of you may not agree with me and that is ok . . . this is a free country and I will not debate what free means this time.  But, I believe America has been selfish and self-centered long enough.  We, as a whole, need to be more tolerant of each other and of others all over the world.  We need to keep the violence of sports on the field instead of taking it into our communities and across the world, wanting to change others into how we are – what an arrogant attitude to have. 

Yes, we are Americans and proud to be one, I might add, but that does not mean the rest of the world should be like us, now does it?

Perhaps this is a Rodenberry type of idea that is still too premature for our world, but it is still one in which I want to believe can happen . . . and, I am not naïve enough to think that, we (as collective mankind) can stop aggression, wars, greed, and the strong preying on the weak; yet, the Arab Spring is opening eyes and before that it was the fall of the Berlin Wall and most recently in the US, it the Wall Street Protesters, so, the time could be perfect for some of my New Year’s resolutions to take place.