starting anew

I have been become somewhat obsessed with the show The Biggest Loser. I used to make fun of people (like Adam Hilderbrandt) who watched it religiously. The idea of looking at overweight people cry, sweat and stand on a scale in something pretty close to underwear (frankly, I have some under garments that cover just as much if not more that what they are wearing) just is not my idea of a good hour or two. If they were "holy underwear" I would totally have watched. So shiny.

But this Advent I have spent a good bit of time catching pun on the Biggest Loser. Like I watched 3 episodes of Season 12 yesterday. We (I have sucked Jim and Hannah in, too) have also watched Season 13 during Advent as well. I have watched a lot of people prove that you get emotional when you are hungry. I have also watched a lot of people prove the point that if you want to make a change, you don't need to wait until a certain date to come…like January 1st…to make that change.

I can't tell you how many times I have this past week I have heard someone say, "…in the coming year, I am going to…" and most of the time the rest of the sentence has to do with eating better and eating less sugar. It's kind of like I am going to rehab tomorrow. That worked out well for Amy Winehouse by the way.

Here are my thoughts on that:

* it's nice to have a easy to remember start date to mark a change, but is it that much harder to remember December 30th than January 1st. come on, people.

* in Vedanta, they understand reincarnation to happen every moment. Every moment, you are born again. Every moment, you get a chance to start again. Every moment, you get to choose to be a new person. Every moment is the moment to become better. So, wait?

* remember that story of the man who was going to follow Jesus, but decided that he had a bunch of other stuff to do first and Jesus said you go right ahead and walked away (New Living Tara Paraphrase). we think that guy is all jacked up with the wrong priorities…there you go.