One year ended another replaced it. Calendar story you tell me! And it's true that over time many calendars have been used: Chinese, Egyptian, Julian Hijri calendars and so on. But today it is clear that apart from six countries (Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Iran, Nepal and Vietnam), the Gregorian calendar is unanimous in the world. . Like the watch and the diary, the calendar helps us to situate the past and to organize the future: the watch on the hours of the day, the diary on the weeks and months of the year and the calendar on millennia years and centuries. It remains to be seen if it is we who make time or if it is time that makes us? I feel there is a bit of both. On the one hand, not letting time completely eat you up, on the other, knowing how to take your time, the fact remains that we must not hide that our arteries are indeed old.
Still, on this day of change recognized almost by all of humanity, it is fashionable and may be good to take some resolution for the year that begins. I tell myself that above all it is wise to stay within the realm of the possible. Do not set goals that we are likely to abandon along the way because they will have been too ambitious and above all in contradiction with who we are deeply. This at the risk not only of losing confidence in ourselves but above all of losing esteem in our own eyes. To make unattainable resolutions is to introduce a perverse mechanism in our interior which will have the effect of eating away at us and which will go against what these resolutions were supposed to do: improve our well-being and our pleasure in being in this world. .
take small steps, take the pleasure of seeing each small step come true and stay the course. That's pretty much my approach. On this subject I have an anecdote told to me by a dear friend that I would like to share with you as an example full of common sense and exemplary. It's a story about Reb Anderson, a Zen priest who was once the abbot of the first Zen monastery established outside of Japan in California. Unlike monks, Zen priests are not celibate. 
Each year Reb and his wife, Rusa Chiu, take stock of the past year and then decide, each on their own, if they commit to living one more year together. Then they find each other and give each other their answer. Both have two daughters and four grandchildren, which means that for several decades now, each year they mutually resolve to live and continue the journey together. It's an approach that I like. We don't make a commitment for life all at once, but each year we make a new resolution and, with small steps, strengthened by this renewed commitment, we move forward, we progress and we strengthen our self-esteem and the mutual respect.
