Sixty Five in Twenty Five: Four New Year’s Resolutions

After 65 of them, a new year launches for me without much to distinguish it from previous turns around the sun. Still, several significant events in 2024 propel me forward into 2025 and I feel compelled to set out four resolutions to ensure the momentum carries forward:

1. Get Outside 
2. Be Purposeful in the Small Things 
3. Be Together in the Big Things
4. Be Aware Politically, Act Locally  

Get Outside.  Walking defines my relation to the outdoors, and 2024 was a year of big hikes for me and Anna. It ended with two days that capture the best of walking: discovering new places (the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania), time with special people (my son and daughter-in-law), perspectives gained from effort (a climb up through leafless forests to the view point of Baughman Rock), the wonder of water on the landscape (Cucumber Falls), and the joyful satisfaction of a challenge overcome (finding our way back to our destination after a misstep off the trail as a cold rain began to fall).  

In the year ahead, my major focus will be on protecting and promoting nature. I need to get outside regularly to remind myself of the “why” of my work.  I have one friend who starts every day by stepping outside to see the sky unimpeded and another who commits to go birdwatching daily.  For me, I need at least once a day to move my body in nature, feel air on my face, sight a bird or other wild resident, smell the earth or its plants, look for the light, and take time to be deliberate in my thoughts.

The wealth of information I can gain from an internet connection propels and directs my work, but at least once a day I need to step away from the screen, put my phone in a pocket, and be out in nature to remind myself what really matters and link me with the deeper meaning of my life. Time alone in nature clears my head, but walking in conversation provides perhaps no better way to connect with another person. I have a friend I used to walk with every Tuesday afternoon, and I hope to re-establish that routine and get outside with more friends this year. Give me a call or a ping and let’s set a date for a walk.

Be Purposeful in the Small Things.  Typically, resolutions focus on individual behaviors, and I too am thinking about how I exercise my body, what I eat and consume (or not), and the choices I make with my time and attention.  Let’s all support one another in these efforts to better ourselves and the world around us.

My biggest disappointment of 2024 was that nature was not a campaign issue. This reversed a bi-partisan trend that began more than a hundred years ago with Teddy Roosevelt who elevated conservation goals on the national and international scene. Most concerning, we may fail to capitalize on and extend policies to address climate change. Time is running out to prevent the worst impacts of a warming planet, and many people of my generation and the several behind us are discouraged about the future.

Rather than despair, I intend to embrace action. No individual alone can solve the climate crisis, but I take hope in that I can control my own decisions. It is empowering to choose to shop in town for goods and services, drive an electric vehicle past a gas station, eat less meat, ride a bike to a meeting, or invest with sustainability in mind.  As I look at the 2025 calendar, I know weddings and other family obligations will put me on several long plane flights; rather than feel the hypocrite, I know I need to work harder to decrease the amount of energy I consume, reduce the carbon discharged to the atmosphere, and increase the number of trees planted around my home.

We live in a democracy with a capitalist economy, and while it’s easy to convince yourself that your individual decisions don’t matter, the reality is that the collective outcome of larger systems do reflect the decisions we each make individually. More importantly, when I focus on what I can control, rather than what I cannot, I create hope for the future. I invite you to make one or two deliberate changes in your behavior that honor the environment around us.

Be Together in the Big Things.  The hardest, but most valuable, lesson I have gained as an adult is the necessity of respecting, learning from, and working with others. Empathy and community come naturally for many people, but not so easily for someone like me raised to pursue intellectual achievement, strive for individual success, and responsibly use the privilege of my upbringing.  “None of us alone is as smart as all of us together” has become my mantra through the experience of four decades as a city planner, leadership instructor, and community philanthropist.  

My purpose stands clear before me: participate actively in the communities I am a part of to build an equitable, sustainable society that promotes the conservation of land, water, and species diversity.  I am fortunate to have the ability to direct a few financial resources and my personal time to this work, but I have discovered that I don’t have all the answers, much less the ability, to accomplish these objectives on my own.  

I am fortunate to be part of a family philanthropy that my grandparents and then parents created. In the last year we have grown that effort to include non-family members, new employees, and associations with organizations and individuals.  At the center of the team is a partnership with my spouse of 35 years who now formally works alongside me. Together, this team of diverse talents has the potential to do great things.  

When it comes to changing the systems we are a part of—whether they be economic or political, local or national—we need to work with others. This requires me to listen, understand, and appreciate the needs and interests of others. Only through a combination of perspectives do we see the whole picture. Only through collaboration and compromise can we achieve significance. I am putting this belief to the test in 2025 when I work with others to promote recycling as a way to build a stronger, more sustainable economy in Shiawassee County.  

Be Aware Politically, Act Locally.  I am fortunate to live and work in a small town, where trust, personal relationships, and mutual cooperation can be formed with a wide variety of people.  But it is a backwater, and I don’t mean that despairingly. Rather, larger regional, national, and international forces greatly influence the place I love. To effect change here, we need to be aware of what is happening in the larger economy and respond to the changing currents and rising and falling levels of success. I am proud to have played a small role in the creation of the Shiawassee Economic Development Partnership which has been able to channel some of the economic growth occurring within Michigan and direct it to new jobs and wealth creation in my community.

We need to take the same approach to policy developments in Lansing and Washington. The last few elections have been contentious, and partisan politics often infiltrate to the local level. I have my own strong political views, as do most of the people here, but they matter less than our ability to work together to understand how the political environment impacts the people, nonprofit organizations, private businesses, and local governments that make up our community.  In the years ahead, major achievement will depend on our ability to work with a variety of local partners to capture the most private investment, public funding and philanthropic grants to benefit our neighbors and the place in which we live.  

Nature Surrounds Us even when the weather, our obsession with technology, or the busy-ness of life keeps us inside.  Being outside in the watershed of my beloved Shiawassee River reminds me that we are part of something bigger.  What is the most critical need in front of us? Why do we do the work we do? What do we allow to claim our time? I feel as if I have a few good years of work left in me, perhaps inspired by my father whose third career as a philanthropist kept him vital into his 90s.  But, after a scare with a brain tumor a few years ago, I also know that we are not guaranteed any definite tenure here. So, I resolve to make the most of the time I do have to “do all the good I can, by all the means I can, in all the ways I can, in this place, as long as I ever can” (to paraphrase and adapt a quote often ascribed to John Wesley). I look forward to the year ahead.  I hope our paths cross, and that if our goals align, we can work together.  Happy New Year.