Happy New Year's Resolution

By Michael L. Wojciechowski

 

For the past 38 years, my family has celebrated at the stroke of midnight of the New Year, with sparkling cider and herring on a cracker. It’s been my family’s tradition for 2 generations now. My mom taught me doing this at the stroke of midnight, is to help bring monetary good luck to my family. It may be the smallest piece of herring on that cracker, and it’s a cracker sandwich actually, but it’s a tradition that has brought us good luck all these years.

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My other personal tradition is also a small Chinese statue of Ho Tai. A deity of Chinese folklore to bring monetary good luck also. Thinking we can always use as much good luck without it costing us anything. Call it what you will, but after 38 years of financial stability, there is something to be said for continuing that tradition.

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Another New Year’s Resolution that I’ve done is to link back up with an old friend, coworker, neighbor, or classmate. It’s to re-establish an old friendship. Facebook has been a great tool in re-connecting with someone. White pages subscription is another tool to finding someone. It’s all in how eager you want to re-kindle a friendship.

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I’ve found classmates from grade school and high school. Also, from my National Guard crew that I’d only work one weekend a month and 2 weeks during the summer. And then there’s my former coworkers. Since leaving the Navy in 1979, I’ve worked at only 6 different companies for 41 years. Two of them I worked at were 17 years each. The rest of the 4 jobs totaled 7 years. I’ve worked with people of all ethnicities, ages, genders, and religions. I’ve always treated people like how I wanted to be treated: with respect. It’s not very often that I’ve been able to link up with any one of them due to death or relocation. Most of those years, the lack of phone numbers being the same, or not like we had cell phones back then like we do now.

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But the point of this article is to remind people that if you value an old friendship of coworkers, friends, neighbors, or classmates, make the effort to seek them out and re-connect. You just might be surprised how much you still have in common despite how many years you have been apart.

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