New Year's Eve: How will you change in 2012?

Jake here. Last week, a hike through Painted Canyon near Mecca, better known locally as Ladder Canyon for the many ladders required in order to navigate on foot, provided this photographer with a wondrous dreamlike world, and a chance to think about life's changes as the New Year approaches.

How we think about change may be the key to everything in life. It has been, for me.

After the jump, we go hiking in a place of great contemplation...

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy. - W. Somerset Maugham in The Razor's Edge, 1943

 

It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow. - Ralph Ellison

We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains. - Anne Sullivan

Change your thoughts and you change your world. - Norman Vincent Peale

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. - Nelson Mandela in A Long Walk to Freedom

You can't punish yourself into change. You can't whip yourself into shape. But you can love yourself into well-being. - Susan Syke
 

An architect's most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board, and a wrecking bar at the site. - Frank Lloyd Wright

 
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones. - John Cage

 
Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better. - King Whitney Jr.

 
This isn't good or bad. It's just the way of things. Nothing stays the same. - Real Live Preacher weblog

  
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. - E. B. White

Turbulence is life force. It is opportunity. Let's love turbulence and use it for change. - Ramsay Clark

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. - James Baldwin

 
This is your time and it feels normal to you, but really, there is no normal. There's only change and resistance to it and then more change. - Meryl Streep, in a 2010 commencement speech

We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves. - Lynn Hall in Where Have All the Tigers Gone?, 1989

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me. - Carol Burnett 

How will you choose to change in 2012?