As the hours clocked through and the new year approached, the inevitable question was soon to be asked from countless friends online.

“What’s your resolution?”

Ah, yes. The annual gamble. According to research by the University of Scranton, only eight percent of those who make a resolution will achieve it, and a full one-quarter will abandon their goal within one week.

But, as Han Solo likes to say in all those films, “Never tell me the odds.”

As for me, I don’t believe in resolutions. Please understand, I do not scoff at yours, or condemn you for your choice in your approach to the journey. But as for myself, I am a practicing Zen Buddhist (with a lot of emphasis on the word practice – I’ll let you know in about thirty years or so if I’ve started to get any of it right.) I take each day on the road a single step, a single hour, maybe a single day at a time. I have things I would like to accomplish, but unless they are external events involving interaction with someone else, they are never a fixed point on the journey. Too many other things can and do occur – the four-year quest to complete my second novel was an example of that. I make plans, and the Universe tends to laugh at them.

There is this beautiful lesson in Zen – when one stops trying to force the world to be like they want it to be and instead accepts that it is what it is at this moment, if they stop, be still, and pay attention, they will find the Universe had opened an amazing array of potential journeys for them, ways to help find out what their world could be.

Of course, this could just the path the works singularly for a 55-year-old hermit in Florida. As I like to think of it, One Road, Many Paths, All Valid, All Valued. Or as I heard someone else describe it, Your Mileage May Vary.

Be well on your journey this year. Namaste.