Another year has passed and what a year it was. In the Middle East the “Arab Spring” was credited with ousting several despots that were more interested in serving themselves than serving their people. In the United States we experienced an outpouring of dissatisfaction from protestors involved in the “Occupy” movement. Many of those protests are still going on.
Closer to home, we were visited by Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee. Together, they brought millions of dollars in damage to southeast Pennsylvania and power outages that lasted more than a week in some areas. Heavy flooding and more damage were wrought upon us by record-setting rainfall that deluged the region and challenged 100-year-flood expectations. A Halloween snowstorm dumped more than a foot of snow in some nearby areas, and in the middle of all this a Virginia earthquake, with a magnitude greater than 5 points, rumbled through the area unnerving many residents – especially those close to Exelon’s nuclear power generating station in Limerick Township.
Our problems pale in comparison to issues troubling our world and our nation, and there are those who say that we can only hope for a better 2012. We have little control over the natural disasters that happen to us. But, we can help to take control of the man-made disasters by doing our part to be better people. We need to work harder to sustain what’s right and improve what’s wrong.
To guide our readers, in what has become a New Year’s tradition here at the Town and Country newspaper, we offer the following resolutions. They’re not a cure-all – they’re only words. You still need to provide the action. They are simple words that provide a powerful lesson and can be easily adapted to everyday life at home, school, work or even in the halls of local, state and federal government.
The person who penned this bit of wisdom is unknown to history, but the words have been around for decades. The good sense provided by them is timeless. Place them in a prominent place and read them often.
Resolutions
No one will ever get out of this world alive. Resolve, therefore, to maintain a reasonable sense of values.
Take care of yourself. Good health is everyone's major source of wealth. Without it, happiness is almost impossible.
Resolve to be cheerful and helpful. People will repay you in kind.
Avoid angry, abrasive persons. They are generally vengeful.
Avoid zealots. They are generally humorless.
Resolve to listen more and talk less. No one ever learned anything by talking.
Be chary of giving advice - wise men don't need it, and fools won't heed it.
Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and wrong.
Sometime in life you will have been all of these.
Do not equate money with success. There are many successful moneymakers who are miserable failures as human beings. What counts most about success is how a person achieves it.
In closing, the staff at the Town and Country newspaper wishes all of our readers a safe, happy and prosperous New Year.