The only person I can change . . .

. . . is myself.

Just one more day of the old year.  I think my only resolution should be to remember that I can only make resolutions for myself.   I want to set the very highest standards for myself but refuse to apply those standards to others, to remind myself that people are (or at least may be) doing the best that they can, to carry out the description of love in I Corinthians 13:5:  “It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”  As I’ve said many, many times, I am the Queen of Grudge-Holders.  If I concentrated on just that italicized phrase all year I’d be much easier to live with.  (“If thou, O Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, who should stand?”)

It may surprise you that I remember a scene from one of the Star Trek movies in connection with the concept of setting standards for oneself–Star Trek:  Generations, the one in which Captain Kirk dies.  (Side note:  Everyone, but everyone, was talking about Kirk’s death, but Jim somehow missed all that.  So when we went to see the movie he sat there at the end saying, “I didn’t know Kirk was going to die!”  To which I unsympathetically replied, “You’re the only one on the planet who didn’t!”)  Anyway, I remember very vividly (and just went on Netflix to refresh my memory) the scene in which Captain Picard goes back in time to persuade Kirk to return to the Enterprise from his idyllic home in the mountains and help save the universe.  Here’s what struck me:  even though Kirk is living by himself, with no one expected to come visiting, his house is beautifully in order.  Yes, I know it’s just a movie set!  But it would have been totally against Kirk’s nature for him to be living in squalor.  “It’s my house,” he says.  That’s enough of a reason for it to be beautifully maintained.  Ah well.  Life lessons from Star Trek are many.  I’m sure more will show up as this blog continues.