We celebrate the New Year by ringing it in, making toasts and singing Auld Lang Syne. Our resolutions vow that this year will be different. We will be different. We aspire to be better versions of ourselves.

It feels good. And for awhile we believe we can live up to our ambitious New Year’s resolutions.

But old habits die hard. Within days or even hours, our resolutions fall away, along with our hopes of becoming the best versions of ourselves.

Which brings us to now – July 1st – the year’s midpoint.

It is no longer a new year, but a middle-aged year. At 182 days done and 183 days left, we are perched upon the year’s midpoint.

And this year, through a gift from the cosmos, we have a celestial, metaphorical representation of the calendar’s midpoint in the form of the Full Moon, which shines in tonight’s sky.

(In my hometown of San Antonio, the Moon becomes full at precisely 9:20pm on July 1st.)

The phases of the Moon parallel the progression of this year as we reach midpoint from New Moon to New Moon just as we reach the halfway mark of the year.

This year was born new, slowly waxing to fullness, as was the Moon.

The year and the Moon are full at precisely the same time.

After tonight, the Moon and the year will wane, retreating from fullness into inevitable shadow, death and rebirth.

So it is with our lives and the lives of all whom we love and will ever know.

The circular cycle of birth, growth, fullness and disintegration mirrors every aspect of our lives, our years and the heavenly bodies in the sky.

The New Year’s resolutions we made seem so long ago. We assume we cannot get them back.

Or can we?

Why isn’t the midpoint of the year – like the fullness of the Moon – just as appropriate of a time to reflect, take personal inventory and begin again?

I believe it is.

While you can certainly choose a New Year or a midpoint or a Full Moon as the auspicious moment to make changes in your life, you can also choose any day, any moment, any moon to grow, to evolve, to do the right things.

Sometimes the New Year or the mid year or the Full Moon whispers to you that your time is now. And like the year and the Moon, your days are full, but waning.

Perhaps now is the time to choose to become more of the person you came here to be.

Ring it in.

Raise a toast.

Sing Auld Lang Syne.

Even in July.

Happy Mid Year!