Happy New Year!!!!

Happy New Year! May all of you have a prosperous 2010! Each year I say little rhyme to myself according to the numbers in the new year. For example in 2008 I said it was going to be great; in 2009 I said it would be fine; and my rhyme for 2010 is "It's going to be better than it has been."(LOL).

The truth of the matter is, none of know what the year before us beholds. Who would have "thunk" Michael Jackson would have not made it out of 2009 alive. I remember vividly sitting in my dentist's chair on June 25, 2009 when a friend who is a writer for WPIX's News at 10 texted me that Michael Jackson had died. I actually had the news before the major news networks released the info. I started texting people who read their phones in disbelief. Closer to home, a close personal friend who was a young mother of two, born in March of 1963, who I had seen a few weeks before her death, passed in October of 2009. When we last met she shared how it was ironic how she was the one who was sick as she was very health conscious and was always on her husband and children about eating healthy and exercising. Who would have thought that she would be gone before the year ended.

I watched as the famous and the not so famous; some I was related to and others who I had just seen in passing; the old and the not so old transition from mortality to immortality; all unexpectedly. I say all of this to say that we must appreciate and be thankful for each and every minute that we are allowed to be alive. Think about it, ten years have gone by already. I remember clearly the Y2K scare, when everyone thought the world was going to come to an end in year 2000 because all of the computers would stop working due to a glitch concerning the numbers in 2000.

As the picture above suggests, if we are to move forward into 2010, we must run around the wall of fear and dump our old baggage and unfinished business in the trash can of life. It is the only way that we will truly be on the road to freedom. This road includes happiness, dreams, forgiveness, peace of mind, and prosperity. It makes no sense that many of us are walking around here not talking to family members and friends over something that happened so long ago that we have forgotten why we are not speaking. Life is too short for grudges. It takes too much energy to consciously ignore someone. Trust me on this one, it's much easier to say "Hi."

So as we move into 2010, let us dump whatever is weighing us down and hindering us from running this race called life like an Olympian. I am grateful and thankful to God to see 2010. My intention is to be 100 and healthy(I've got a few more years to go); however, as God laughs at my plans,the truth be told, I don't know His and if indeed I will myself make it out of 2010. I am sure Michael Jackson and my friend Selena expected to make it out of 2009 last January 1. So with that said I am going to appreciate each moment and each of you. This critical thinker urges you all to do the same. Have a wonderfully blessed and prosperous 2010.

Marc