During the holidays, I got a card from a friend who now lives most of the time in the fog and softer skies of England. The front of his card quoted his last year’s resolution: Be a better friend. And the inside pledged a new resolve to honor that resolution. I didn’t know that had been his 2002 commitment, and I don’t feel that his friendship has ebbed or faltered in any way. But it got me thinking.

It made me think about how profound it really is for a year to end and a new one to begin. It’s an occasion that is shared by everyone in the world; it’s tied to no religion or philosophy but is instead an absolute fact. A year is gone and another is beginning. I thought about the slippage of time, how blissfully unaware of it we are in childhood but how as adults we feel it as a constant twinge in our bones. Life really is short, we say wistfully. I thought about how we too often paddle around in the shallows, keeping some distance from the deeper currents that tug at us–loves, losses, friendships, passings. It’s in the diving down that the true treasures of life are found. But that requires a decision, a choice and maybe a little bravery.

These are big, scary times, and there is little that seems dependable or solid. It seems like a good year to make some resolutions. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke said that our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasures. On the first morning of 2003, I resolved to remember that–to trust that the journey through fear brings us to some kind of illumination, some kind of wisdom and compassion that may have eluded us before. Look at what rose from us after September 11; the unthinkable happened, the most frightening nightmare crashed into us, and from it we learned about heroism.

I have resolved to not make decisions and judgments about people when I have no knowledge of what their lives are about. A couple of years ago, I used to see a woman jogging every day, pushing her tiny baby in one of those baby joggers. I’d see her when I was out running; I’d see her at other times of the day. She was pretty and blond and obviously quite fit. I decided she must be the wife of some wealthy man, with housekeepers and nannies and all sorts of time on her hands to go on so many runs at different times of the day. Then one morning I walked into Starbucks and there she was, working behind the counter. It turned out that she was a single mother, working two jobs, and she squeezed in time to run whenever she could. I have never forgotten that lesson, and I think it’s a good one to polish off and set in the windowsill at the start of another year. We never know what someone else’s life is really like.

I’ve also resolved to take more time for silence. As a writer, I have a lot of quiet time–long stretches in which not a word comes out of my mouth because words are coming from my fingers onto the page. But there is a difference between quietness and silence. Herman Melville said, “God’s one and only voice is silence.” I have found that the days when I carve out a wedge of time for deep silence are better days–smoother, easier, sweeter. Things roll off me instead of sparking warlike reactions. I can’t do anything about the war with Iraq that seems to loom closer, but I can do something to avoid the tiny wars of daily life.

Finally, I have resolved to not say what many of us say at the end of a year: “I’m glad that year is over.” It’s dawned on me that every year for decades now I have heard people make that declaration, and have often made it myself. It’s as if we expect all 12 months to pass by without any heartache or strife or difficulty … even though we know life doesn’t work that way. I learned many important lessons in 2002, some born from pain and loss, others from joy. That’s the most we can ask of ourselves and the best that a year can be. If in those 12 months, those four seasons, we grew beyond who we were before, if we reached farther and plunged down deeper, then it was a valuable year. Not one to be kicked aside.