Strive to do good this year
Mmegi Editor | Tuesday January 6, 2015 13:30
These are some of the New Year’s resolutions that you might have made and hope to accomplish by the end of the year. Granted, it will not be easy to achieve whatever goal you set for yourself, especially if it is one to do with kicking a stubborn habit such as binge drinking or chain smoking. But you can surely take it one day at a time. Do not grow weary. Do not give up. Adopt tenacity as your motto. Refuse to entertain failure, even if you previously failed to achieve the goal you set for yourself. More importantly, adopt selflessness and give a voice to the voiceless and the marginalised. Better still, you may want to adopt the list of nine things Pope Francis suggested his staff should do, when he addressed them on Christmas eve:
1. Take care of your spiritual life, your relationship with God, because this is the backbone of everything we do and everything we are.
2. Take care of your family life, giving your children and loved ones not just money, but most of all your time, attention and love.
3. Take care of your relationships with others, transforming your faith into life and your words into good works, especially on behalf of the needy.
4. Be careful how you speak, purify your tongue of offensive words, vulgarity and worldly decadence.
5. Heal wounds of the heart with the oil of forgiveness, forgiving those who have hurt us and medicating the wounds we have caused others.
6. Look after your work, doing it with enthusiasm, humility, competence, passion and with a spirit that knows how to thank the Lord.
7. Be careful of envy, lust, hatred and negative feelings that devour our interior peace and transform us into destroyed and destructive people.
8. Watch out for anger that can lead to vengeance; for laziness that leads to existential euthanasia; for pointing the finger at others, which leads to pride; and for complaining continually, which leads to desperation.
9. Take care of brothers and sisters who are weaker...the elderly, the sick, the hungry, the homeless and strangers, because we will be judged on this.
It matters not whether you are Catholic or Evangelical; Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or are a native believer, you can adopt these universally wise words. It also doesn’t matter whether you are agnostic or undecided, you can still find meaning in the words. It is in pursuing this godly path that we shall achieve our new year’s resolutions and find peace for ourselves, those around us, and the environment.
Today’s thought
“May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue, so that I triumph even when I fall!”
- Aleister Crowley, Moonchild