Barbara’s 2008 Valentine card to Jim. (Spoiler alert: Jim was 18 and Barbara 16 when they met in 1960)

Jim's Wisdom # 15

New Year’s Resolution #2:

Find People You Like, Tell Them, and Tell Them Why

Try this simple, sensible, yet powerful commitment to yourself and then others.

The Civility Credo

The true test of civility is a commitment to verbal, written communication and actions that are positive and declarative and behaviors that are simple, sensitive, sensible, constructive, helpful, empathetic and benefit the recipient out of proportion positively to the sender.

Any other pathways lead only to trouble, prolong problems, and delay mitigation and resolution.

Here’s what goodness actually looks like: simple, positive, and powerful.

It almost seems that discussions of civility and decency are hard to begin because everyone actually knows what they should be doing, but the response is generally, “So where do we begin?” The place to begin is with the credo and you can build actions into your life immediately with powerful civilities and simple decencies.

The larger issue is just what are the pathways to civility, goodness, decency, and integrity? These are those pathways.

Happy New Year.