Happy new calendar year!

I saw this quote on another blog today... and I liked it...

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

~Albert Einstein

...I also liked the blog in case you wanted to check it out... life... as it happens

The author was talking about the new year... and it made me realize... that, like her, I don't really see this as special day. I don't make resolutions... I'm not into trying to use some random date to try to change my life. If I'm going to do something... I do it... if I'm not going to do it... then I don't. Whenever the motivation strikes I use it, and I'm also old enough and wise enough to know that, for me, if I'm not motivated on January 1st then no resolution is going to hold.

I remember, as a kid, always hoping that the new year really meant that things could change, or be different, but now I see that New Year's is just like a birthday. You're no different the day before than you are the day after. And yet, the day is treated like some magical day... and often, disappointment follows. I know... I'm a New Year's Grinch.

All that said, I actually do have a tradition. We go to the beach on New Year's Day. Usually it does not rain on New Year's here in coastal California... although this year there's an 80% chance of rain predicted... so we're headed out today.

Oh... and back to that blog... she came up with a word for 2011... and that sounded a bit more like my style too... so I'm going to copy the idea.

From 2011 I would like:

OK, like 45 minutes have passed since I typed the previous line... at first I thought I wanted all kinds of things that, with more thought, I rejected. I thought this was going to be easy... after all, how hard can it be to know what you want? Reflecting on that, I'd say that we don't often REALLY think about what we want... we assume it, or take some initial desire to mean that we want something... but we don't really think about what we want in our lives.

Anyway, I landed on "balance" in my own mind, but didn't like some of the dictionary definitions like "what is left over".

So, my word for 2011 is going to be:

PROPORTION

I know, it sounds weird, but here are the definitions... and this is absolutely what I'm looking for this year:

pro·por·tion n.

1. A part considered in relation to the whole.

2. A relationship between things or parts of things with respect to comparative magnitude, quantity, or degree: i.e. the proper proportion between male and female energy (this is my comparison... the dictionary had some banal thing like oil and vinegar in dressing).

3. A relationship between quantities such that if one varies then another varies in a manner dependent on the first: "We do not always find visible happiness in proportion to visible virtue" (Samuel Johnson).

4. Agreeable or harmonious relation of parts within a whole; balance or symmetry.

(I deleted the math defintions)

tr.v. pro·por·tioned, pro·por·tion·ing, pro·por·tions

1. To adjust so that proper relations between parts are attained. (Sounds FANTASTIC to me!)

2. To form the parts of with balance or symmetry.

So that's it... I want proportion. I think spiritually this is what we are referring to when we say we're looking for balance. Whatever you call it... this is my word for 2011...

What do you want?