The Beauty of New Year Resolutions

There's a story that told about John Paul I, who was only the Pope for about 30 days before John Paul II, but right after a Wednesday audience, he met a group of young people, and one of the women in the group confessed to having led a very dark moral life up until that point. John Paul I offered her great advice, which I think is extremely helpful as we approach the New Year. He could have offered her some pious reflection, but the first thing he said was, "how old are you", and she responded, "I am 35," and he said, "perfect, you might live to be 85, in which case, you have 50 years to get it right," or she might live 50 days more, in either case, the only thing to do is to begin again! Which as the story goes, she did, and became a great person.

There's no better time to start anew then at the begginning of a new year, here's a simple suggestion that I am going to try and keep in 2010, Less News, and Less Media. Think about the fear that the media creates in our culture, this is not how we are meant to live. Every time I bring up the distaster that is the media, most people agree, but we keep going back to it for more, its like how many stories of crime and sin can our humanity take? Its like drinking poison on a daily basis, and most of it is rootless. Chesterton has the great analogy, where the media reports on the man that fell off the scaffold, it was terrible and sad to be sure, but the media doesn't report on the 1 million men that worked in total peace on scaffolds throughout the world that day, they only report on the one man that fell off, and they report on it, as if men are falling off scaffolds across the world, and that we must do something to stop men falling off scaffolds. At some level the news only reports on what is not happening, so what's the use? I have decided to keep my news intake to a minimum this year, and without a doubt get rid of the 24 hour news, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc, if enough people cleaned their system of these channels, then first off they would go out of business, and more importantly we would have a much happier country; wouldn't that be nice!

Happy New Year.