Perfect 10?

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Ten. Not the Commandments or a gymnast’s perfect score. Not the old Dudley Moore movie or the backdrop of Hamilton’s picture.

Ten is the New Year. At least, on January 1, 2010 it was. How will yours rate?

So we may call it Twenty Ten, or out of a decade’s habit, Oh Ten. But to me it’s simply Ten. It sounds so clean, so perfect.

But a new year can be like a new car. The minute you drive off the dealer’s lot, your brand new year is a used year.

So what’s the minute for you when the shiny New Year is, well, just a used year? Is it the first time you break your resolution; when you light up, pig out, blow up, veg out, drink up, pass out or shoot up? Or when you simply fall flat on your face with a self-proclaimed challenge?

Maybe it’s more gradual, when old habits slowly weasel back into your life. When exciting new commitments become old and worn, and pushed further back in the closet.

Is it when you realize, it may be a New Year, but it’s the old you?

Change, true change in our lives rarely happens suddenly. We know this, and yet pretend not to. Lasting change is a process, like putting miles on your new car. It may be used, but you pull into your driveway for the first time, and the odometer is still mostly a long row of zeros. You have months of new car smell to enjoy.

Can we see the New Year that way? There’s three hundred sixty five days in this New Year.

Change a little every day, and next year – next year you’ll look back and see. It was a New Year all year long.And on a scale from one to ten, you’ll see this year was, definitely, a 10.
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