restructuring the frame

At times, it seems that this planet circles the Sun at a trillion miles per hour. The sun has barely risen before it is setting again and at the end of the day what have we to say for ourselves? What have we to say for ourselves at the end of a year? C.S. Lewis says that the process of living necessarily needs to be progressive. What, he ponders, would life after this be like if a vice that we let get perpetually worse through the decades continued to decline at the same rate for eternity? This, he muses, would truly be - perhaps the very definition of - a living hell: to live until infinity with, say, an irrepressible and worsening inclination to.... (fill in blank).

Each day, then, each moment, each breath should be trending in a positive direction. Easier said than done, right?

In some ways, I guess, moving to Haiti was an attempt to better myself as much as it was an effort to better the lives of others. Strangely, the two are connected and in devoting time the latter, the former just seems to happen -- same for me, I hope. But still, I neglected important things while living in that equally slow-paced and stressful environment. To tend to that neglect, I will have to do, for lack of a better expression, a little soul searching -- something I find much more difficult (and scary) than exploring dangerous developing countries. I have always been good at fun and adventure but have famously struggled a bit with happiness and peace.

This year will be an adventure but not like Haiti -- different but equally challenging and exciting and a whole heck of a lot less sweaty.

Not even a saint has a y=x2 correlation between time passing and improvements made. Rather, successful onward progress is directly correlated to our ability to manage, deal with and learn from both small and large tumbles. So I'm workin' on recovery skills. What child does not eventually pick himself up off the ground if he falls in the course of learning to walk? We are human and thus intrinsically flawed (19th century French thinkers debate this point... but let's just say). We will fall.