With the New Year upon us, it's a traditional time for making resolutions. For a few days, we resolve to improve ourselves, and then for the rest of the year, we spend most of our time judging others, telling them what they're doing wrong and how they are failing to live up to our standards. A week after the New Year begins, most people have already forgotten what their New Year's resolutions are.

Throughout the year, there are endless threads where we rather smugly justify our lives by judging everyone else's (except those who agree with us.) A couple of New Year's resolutions won't change that, in Mudcat or our daily lives.

Each of us is born with a potential far beyond any that we ever realize. We all fall short of the glory. For myself, trying to put my house in order is a full-time job. While it feels good to draw attention to the perceived failings of others, I don't know anyone's heart but my own. I don't know what burdens others bring to Mudcat, or what they face when the computer screen goes blank. I don't know what has brought them to this point in their lives, and even less so do I know what they should do with their lives. If we were all so Damned wise, as we try to present ourselves, then why have we messed up our own lives so often?

The best we can do is to encourage each other, and look within ourselves to see our own weaknesses. That's a full-time job. Not just for the first week of the New Year.

As the song says, maybe it's time we "put a little love in our hearts." "That's what friends are for."

Onward and upward

Jerry