(Our own photo of the new years sky tower  fireworks from our flat)  As we move into a new year we typically spend a bit of time remembering the past and then looking to the future year ahead.  Remembering is good for us, we learn much from our own experiences and the lives of others, and from history…  George Santayana said, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” ( Reason in Common Sense,  vol. 1 of  The Life of Reason  [1905–1906]).   But sometimes we people do more than just remember, we try to LIVE in the past.   We all remember, in our own lives or the life of someone we know, times when months or years after, we are still trying to live in the past…   in our high school days, in the memory of a by-gone relationship, in a glory day or event,  in an old tradition,  or even a painful time when we may have been done wrong, offended or hurt, and we keep reliving it,  wanting it to be...

As we finished up classes for 2017 and examined the students who had finished their courses and those who had not, our director at our Auckland Institute Building (AIB) had a great poster made up.  It is appropriate not only in Institute, but for the students in their University courses (I remember discussing this same problem back home when I served on the Weber University Board of Trustees) , in your job, in parenting, in hard challenges, in life in general, and in the eternities.  It reads simply: “FINISHERS WANTED”.   A great reminder of another reason to be finishers, for those coming behind us.  When asked why she spent so much time studying, researching, working to learn, and then sharing all she learned with her kids, Lou's mom said it was because she wanted her kids to start from her shoulders and not have to start from the ground up. Elder David A, Bednar said to YSA's in Septemebr 2017: “ Your decisions affect those who come after you.” ...