KEY POINTS:
Today, as the saying goes, is the first day of the rest of our lives. A bit twee? Yes. Hackneyed? Certainly. But, as with most such adages, it is nevertheless true. Since this is also the first day of a brand new year, it perhaps takes on an added poignancy.
As this year stretches before us, we can, as usual, be sure only of three things: that God exists, that there will be death and that there will be taxes.
As I draw inexorably closer to the end of the seventh decade of my pilgrimage on this Earth, the more grateful I am that I have been chosen to know that God exists, that he is indeed the creator and sustainer of the universe and the father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that he is in his heaven and the world is unfolding as it should.
I have made no new year resolutions. I gave up doing that decades ago when confronted yet again with the futility thereof. I had only just learned to live one day at a time, so there was no longer any point in trying to bind oneself to generally empty promises for a whole year.
Twenty-four hours is about as much of life as I can cope with. Fretting over yesterday's mistakes leads to a guilt trip; fizzing over what might happen tomorrow brings on anxiety attacks. And, in the meantime, I'm missing out on the now time, which is all there is.
As St Paul put it: "... I have learned in whatever state I am to be content."
That's only possible if I live one day at a time. Yesterday's mistakes are irretrievable; I might never get to see tomorrow. So if I go to bed at the end of each day having achieved what was required of that day, I go to sleep content.
In spite of all that, there are a few things I could hope for as the new year begins, just so long as I don't set my heart on them.
It is a relief that the Government has shelved the Emissions Trading Bill and, sooner rather than later, be forgotten.
What we could do instead of persevering with this slung-together, deeply flawed land unnecessary bill is to review the science upon which it is founded and discover just how shonky it is.
Throughout the world more and more governments (and newspapers) are questioning the theory that global warming, if it exists, is caused by human-induced carbon dioxide and other gas emissions and are backing off placing sanctions on their production.
Were it not for the world financial meltdown, they might not have bothered but, faced with the economic realities of emission limits and trading schemes, they have stepped back from the brink of madness.
In Britain, the Meteorological Service, which has wrongly predicted record high temperatures for almost every year since the turn of the millennium, last month conceded that last year would be the coldest year this century. That means 1998 remains the hottest year on record since the Medieval Warm Period 1000-odd years ago. In fact, world temperatures have fallen since about 2002.
I hope sometime this year the Advertising Standards Authority takes action on the grounds of lying in advertising against whomever it is who writes and authorises the health warnings on cigarette packets.
The warnings invariably say "Smoking causes [whatever dread disease]" when the truth is that smoking might contribute to the development of some affliction or other.
Another thing I would hope for this year is that someone will produce for the supermarket shelves a seedless raspberry jam. Surely there is a big market for such a product among those, like me, who have false teeth, love raspberry jam but can't put up with the discomfort of eating it.
And I hope someone might solve the conundrum of why, in a country in which sheep outnumber people by something like 10 to one, I can't buy a tender lamb chop no matter what I pay.
Meanwhile, the highlight for me of the last week of 2008 was the dismissal on 99 of Australian captain Ricky Ponting in the second innings of the second test against South Africa, depriving him of a world record four twin test match centuries, and the subsequent humbling of the Aussies by nine wickets to give the Jaapies the test and the series. It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of blokes.
* garth.george@hotmail.com