As Yet Another Year Passes, Reflect and Resolve to be Better

As we enter 2024 – sure to be a year of change – it is time to ask ourselves how we can be better. Whether or not we notice, things do get a little better in some ways each day while other things grow worse. This has always been true across time. 

In 2024, we must resolve to be kinder to one another and do more for each other. This would be a good start. When you focus on giving, you begin to feel better about yourself. When you feel better about yourself, you ask more and more what you can do for others.

See how easy that is?

Ever since I could toddle, I’ve always loved the elderly and always will. When I was very little, I lived across the Potomac River from Washington across from Fort Myer. I hung out with retired old folks who donned their webbed lawn chairs and would chat for hours on end as traffic roared by on Route 50 going to and from Washington. They didn’t need cell phones and other electronic devices.

They had each other.

Because I grew up with old people with good old-fashioned values and manners, I learned simple courtesies that seem to have been lost to the ages. I don’t see the level of kindness today that existed at the dawn of the 1960s. My grandparents were always quick to remind me of the words “please” and “thank you.” My grandfather, especially, always corrected the absence of simple manners. You either remembered to practice manners or there were consequences. 

Old school child rearing was quite simple. You either learned or you suffered. Pain teaches. All my grandfather had to do was glare at you across a room and you’d better walk away clean. He never spanked us. All he had to do was focus a disciplined stare. It was called respect for your elders. Although he never hit us, we didn’t want to find out the hard way. We did as we were told.  

This is why I continue to practice courtesies my elders taught me a lifetime ago. I hold the door for those behind me. I will always hold the car door for a lady. I exercise “please” and “thank you” with reckless abandon. When someone says, “Thank You…” I always respond with “You’re welcome…” When someone enters a room or my home, I greet them with a warm welcome. A handshake and a smile communicate who you are in a matter of seconds. 

When I am in line and there’s doubt about who is first, I allow the other party to go first. I find I haven’t lost anything and I am only one person away from the end game. 

No harm putting someone else first.   

As I near seven decades on this apple, I find I am still very fond of old people. I have become an “old people” with many of the same concerns my elders had a lifetime ago. Much as I did as a child, I remember the vulnerability I witnessed in old people when I was a little kid. I felt such empathy for them as their entered the latter of their lives. They needed help getting by. That emotion has never left me and will always be a part of me. All those old folks I remember from a grassy lawn behind the buildings are gone. However, what they taught me has gone the distance and cannot be measured. 

I remain of them.    

As January becomes part of the past with fluid precision, let us all resolve to do better and ask ourselves how we can practice kindness in our daily routines. Do volunteer work. Deliver meals to the poor and elderly. Check in on an elderly neighbor or transport them to the doctor. It’s easy and won’t take up much time. It will make you feel good all day long.