Summer Resolutions

At the end of every barefoot, sun-kissed summer I can remember anxiously asking my mom, "How many days until school starts?"  It was and remains my favorite time of the year.  It has a kind of reset feeling.  New school year, new you.  I always feel more connected to the idea of resolutions or goal-setting this time of year instead of the middle of winter on NYE (where my goal becomes singular: figure out how to get my body on a beach somewhere ASAP).  I came across this, from the poet José Micard Teixeira, and connected with it because it seems so honest and straight-forward.

“I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.”