Today we welcome the new year. Is there a better time to reflect on this new beginning, this new path upon which we must all travel together?

Each of us face yet another 365 days of joy and sorrow, hope and despair, excitement and boredom, passion and lethargy — the yin and yang upon which our lives are built. Once again we are greeted with a clean slate, a blank page. The past is behind us, the future beckons, but now, the present, is where our focus should lie.

Now is the time to start over, to reinvent ourselves as we think we should be or as we wish we could be. And instead of worrying about tomorrow and reliving yesterday, let us take that first step — that huge leap of faith — that will propel us to move ahead to become the person we envision, to live the life that we’ve always dreamed of, to find the one thing in this world that makes up happy.

Whatever it is that we need, it is there for us to accept. But until we take that first step, that “journey of a thousand miles,” we will forever find ourselves mired in confusion and dysfunction. And longing.

Why spend time making resolutions that will more than likely fall by the wayside before the next tide rolls in.

Take a step. Just start walking. Stop waiting for something to happen; do whatever it takes to make it happen.

The future is now.