Like a centipede, each foot laced inside steel-toes-work boots, so drags the remaining hours before the onset of a New Year. Everyone feels it, whether partying in glitzy bars, chanting in monasteries, setting off fireworks, or tossing atop rumpled sheets.

Before us looms the mystery of spent time with its missed opportunities and moral failures. Offsetting this sorry state, however, yawns future change with its disequilibrium or pain, either consciously embraced or forced upon us.

For those with faith, it’s about glimpsing the Unseen Hand shaping our psyches, moving us toward the actualization of our birthright. Admittedly, our sojourn in this life is brief as compared with multiple civilizations before us. History and literature and the arts are replete with stories of how others have done their lives, not without suffering.

Such deep thoughts, of necessity, plunge us within our sacred depths; therein, we learn to listen for direction, to seek counsel when perplexed, and to obey with the heart as we tread into the tomorrows of our lives.

We are not alone and never have been.