Tonight, I kick off the New Year with another first, another challenge, another opportunity to be alive.

I read once that a man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live. The more anger and fear are floating around me, the more I move forward to learn and grow and do some good for as long as possible.

Dinner tonight was Stir Fry vegetables with tofu, put together by Maria with some brown rice I made this afternoon. I’ve got a bowl of barley soaking overnight. It wants to be in a salad.

For me, the opportunity is to live my life right now. Having nothing to prove, I can prove a lot. One thing I am proving to myself is that I won’t spend the rest of my life arguing or trembling, or worrying about tomorrow.

One of the sweet miracles of aging is that every tomorrow is a precious gift, not to be wasted or disrespected. I don’t exactly give thanks every morning when I wake up, but a part of me is grateful.

This week, I took another step towards health and responsibility. I am taking care of myself, as I  have a lot to live for and have only recently begun to live. I signed up for the famous Mayo Clinic weight loss and healthy eating program.

“Life is this simple,” wrote Thomas Merton, “we are living in a transparent world, and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable; it is true.” It’s true to me—every day.

The big idea for me in joining the Mayo program is not to diet but to change the way I think about food. Sugar and carbohydrates have left my life along with significant portions, lots of “healthy” snacks, and 15 or so pounds. I’m on the move, with a focus and commitment that is new to me.

The Mayo Clinic program is not free; it costs about $100 for three months worth of learning enough about food and how to eat it to lose 30 more pounds by Spring and positively change the chemistry of my aging body. They gave me a tailed program to follow and the best nutrition information available.

They message me every day and I keep a journal on their app.

I like it very much. It’s right for me.

As someone with heart disease and diabetes, this is an important step if I wish to live in a healthy and meaningful way for the coming years, however many there are.

(Next week, I spend another night in the Saratoga Hospital Sleep Lab to fine-tune my sleep apnea equipment and sleep even better.) I think I’ve probably eaten more words than there are in a dictionary. These days, much of my life is spent learning things I never knew and doing things I never did and swore I would never do.

It is better for me to admit my foolish mistakes than to pretend they never happened.

I have followed the Mayo Clinic in Cleveland and their website for years. Aside from my doctors, their website is the source of the best medical information I’ve ever gotten, radically better than amateur diagnosticians and strangers on Facebook and social media.

If they have a new kind of diet program, I’m in. They asked many questions and figured out a food plan for me and a goal for weight loss and cholesterol and blood pressure management.

We’ve gone over the different food groups, energy balance, and data about vegetables, fruits, carbohydrates, protein and dairy, fats, and sweets. In recent months, I’ve learned to enjoy eating vegetables and purged my diet of most things, focusing on vegetables and protein, and fruit. I’ve thrown out some things and gone and bought some things.

I’m ready.

The plan is to focus on weight loss for the next two weeks and then move on to put together meal plans that will keep me from starving and fit my health concerns.

For the next two weeks, I am asked to add five habits to my daily life – a healthy breakfast, the best vegetables and fruit for me to eat, a range of whole grains to include in my diet, some healthy fats for balance, and 30 minutes motion – walking, going to the gym, or any other kind of movement. I’m already doing a lot of this, but I did learn some new things.

They want me to move around for 30 minutes a day, in whatever form I wish. I like that choice and lack of pressure.

I scored on all five habits today, and my involvement in the program doesn’t formally start until Thursday. I wanted to get a good start. The Mayo nutrition program has an impressive history of changing people’s eating habits so that the weight people lose stays off.

We are only eating foods that I like in ways that I like. The recommendations are simple, the ingredients readily available, the cooking fast and understandable.

Aging can be an opportunity or an opponent, depending on how I want to see it. Sometimes I need opponents worthy of me, or better than me for me to learn and change. I need to be tried and stretched and pushed to the full use of my powers and then rewarded according to my accomplishments.

I see my sorry record of healthcare management as an opponent, very worthy of me and generally much more potent than me.

This program will push me to the full use of my powers, emotional and physical. The reward is more precious than gold. Years of health so I can share my life with Maria, take ten thousands of beautiful photos, post countless blogs that are interesting and possibly even thoughtful, walk my dogs in the woods, and live.

When you love someone and many things (and three dogs and two donkeys), you have a lot of great reasons to be healthy. I have responsibilities.t

My father often told me I never lived up to my potential when I was a child. He was probably right, but not for the reasons he thought. Here’s my chance, Dad; you were a good man, but you were never much help.

This is a decision about faith, faith in my future, and my strength. I have no wish to live forever, or even for 15 years. I want my remeaning years to be good ones, worthy of my wife, daughter, granddaughter, and me. Reason is the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason is stumped.

That’s why I joined the Mayo Clinic Diet program. It was time for faith to take over when reason failed.

I will, of course, share the trip and what I learned from it.