L is for Looking back and Looking forward

The first New Year after I started this blog I used this well-known quote.

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:

“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.

 That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.

 From 2015 to 2018 I had the same New Year resolution

In 2019 I amended it to

Be even more awesome than last year!

2020 I seem to have ignored the new year!

Back at the beginning of 2021 I found this quote from Tennyson

"Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering ‘It will be happier.’" 

At the beginning of 2022 my quote was from Ann Frank

"What a wonderful thought it is that some of the best days of our lives haven't even happened yet.”

I love New Year!  I know it's fashionable to poo-poo resolutions but I enjoy the planning, the permission to make a new start.  I have been truly blessed in 2022 and I'm looking forward to 2023.   I hope you will be too.

If you think the "Looking back, looking forward" (Janus) at the top of this post is a little unusual, you are right.  It shows Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine, implacable opponents over the poll tax.  22nd November 1990 was the date Mrs Thatcher resigned.  The carving is on a half timbered building in Shrewsbury.