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My New Year's resolution is to never forget this ...
#1
  The More Things Change (the more they stay the same.) - Bon Jovi
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[Image: giphy.gif][Image: Webp-net-resizeimage5.gif] 
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Here is Harry, age 4,  ................................................  ... and here is Harry age 54.
Things have changed for him, but ironically they have remained the same.
"C'est la vie" -  (That's life.)
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I, like most people, find this is true for the majority of new year's resolutions meant to change one's life for the better.
They are very rarely kept ... and become a personal joke.
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"So, may all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions." ~ Joey Adams
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But humbly, I submit to you another man's experience, mine.
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First.
My beloved grandmother (Granny), Flossie, loved her tobacco when she was young ... and she loved it when she was old.
 

[Image: giphy.gif].[Image: Webp-net-resizeimage-2.jpg]
(Of course, this is not her true photo.
... And, for you fellows staring at the girl on the left, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.")
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Now, back to my story. 
... All her children and grandchildren, except me, asked her to give up tobacco and she would say,
"One day, I may quit." :rolleyes:   
 
She never ever promised in any way that she would change because
... she loved the stuff (snuff) since she was a young woman and chose not to give it up until the day she died.
I accepted her choice to not give it up and endure both the criticism and the risk to her health.
(*She did not die of any tobacco-related illness.)

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Secondly.
This is a true photo of my beloved Grandfather "Shelley" (age 37, 1938 A.D.)
[Image: Shelley-larger.jpg]
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Like my grandmother, he had a tobacco habit since he was ten(10) years old, which began in the year 1909.
He always said, "If there is ever proof that tobacco causes cancer, then I will quit immediately."
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I was with him on a day in the year 1965 when the Surgeon General of The United States announced on TV,
"Tobacco causes cancer."


A second after the announcement, he tossed his pack of cigarettes into the trash and said to me (age 13),
"Elijah, I will never smoke or do any form of tobacco again."
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And he never did. ... He lived for 17 more years.
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I saw my earliest role-model have the will-power to give up a life-time 56-year-old habit.
From him, I learned people can change their bad habits ... if they truly want to.
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____________________________________________________________________________


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As to my New Year's Resolution to change myself for the better,
It is the same resolution that I live daily, by the hour and minute, since I learned it in my youth,


"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference."
This is a prayer written by the American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr.

If I have a resolution that is within my ability to achieve,
it is to never forget this great wisdom and practice it in regard to myself and all the people I shall ever know. 

I respect their "conscious choice" as to how they wish to live or die.
(But, I learned as a psychotherapist that most people are not conscious in regard to their choices. 
They do not decide/choose from thinking but from emotions.
What a therapist does is try to help them come to a true conscious self-aware informed choice." )
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No matter how much the world changes, human nature remains the same,
"Therefore, "the more things change the more they stay the same."
... unless you exercise your will-power to choose a better path.


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(*I am convinced from a lifetime of observation as a professional psychologist,
"In the end, people choose to do what they most want to do.")
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I hope you always choose life over death in all matters.
Vaya con Dios. Heart
Elijah
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