Resolved:

I’ve determined to try an experiment: to write (and publish) something every day for a year. This possibly foolhardy undertaking was inspired by two members of a writing group I recently joined. The practice doesn’t seem to have driven them crazy, although it’s possible I just don’t know them that well yet.

My second resolution is to aim at being happy no matter what happens. It’s a flimsy kind of happiness that’s contingent on everything going well, because it can’t always–that’s a law of life. But I believe in a happiness that lives its life independent of circumstance, and I’m curious about this kind. The poet Paul Eluard wrote, “There is another world, and it is inside this one.”

Finally, I want to study the nature of fear and how it works in my mind and life. The other day, this thought came to me: Once a person begins giving in to fear, there’s no end to it. The Zen ancestor Bodhidharma commented,

It’s as if there were someone who painted dragons and tigers with his own hand and yet, upon looking at them, became frightened. Deluded people are also like this. The brush of thought…paints razor mountains and sword forests, and yet it is thought…that fears them.

 Enough said for now. More tomorrow.

Happy new year!