Editor's Note: Here's to the new year

Happy New Year!

Here’s to starting over, to clean slates, to new leaves.

Here’s to letting go of failures, owning up to mistakes, forgiving those who have let you down – including yourself – and moving forward.

Here’s to making a plan and sticking to it, to setting a big goal and planning little steps to get you there.

Here’s to wishing and hoping and praying, and here’s to working hard to give destiny a hand.

Here’s to making the most of what we have, to being grateful for every day and to planning for tomorrow.

Here’s to the times we will fall down this year, the times we will blow off our resolutions, the times we will slide back into comfortable habits – and here’s to waking up the next morning, shaking it off and starting over again.

We live in complex and contentious times. The issues we face are immense, but we face them together. Small ripples make a big difference, so let’s all resolve to be the change we wish to see in the world.

Whatever your resolutions, or even if you haven’t made any, here’s wishing you a happy and prosperous 2013, in which dark clouds have silver linings and opportunity leaves all the windows open.

I conclude with some words of wisdom and inspiration by people more eloquent than me:

“If there is love in the heart, there will be harmony in the home. If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.”
– Chinese proverb

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and may each new year find you a better man.”
– Poor Richard’s Almanac

“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”
– Oprah Winfrey

“Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. ...Let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past.”
– Henry Ward Beecher