You rang in the New Year with high hopes and big dreams for 2011. Now the party is over and you’ve gone back to work. But what’s really different? Maybe nothing, nothing at all. The realization that it is up to you to make a change sets in and we all know change is hard. We are, after all, creatures of habit.
Intend to work out more, lose weight, stop smoking, change you career, get out of debt, make a million? Regardless of your resolution or goal, I offer you a bit of hope that change is in fact possible.
It was the 30th of December on the North Coast of Brittany, near St. Brieuc in France. We went into a Crepperie, the local specialty, with our kids and my Mother in Law to have Crepes for lunch as we so often do when we visit. But this time something shocking was about to happen. For the twelve years that I have known my Mother in Law and I am sure for the 65 years of her life, she orders every time with no exception first a crepe jambon fromage followed by a crepe buerre sucre. Despite a selection of up to 100 varieties;
her order, like her daily routine, is consistent.
On this day just before New Year’s, with no fan fare, she surprised us all and ordered my personal favorite, a crepe Coquilles St. Jacques. Maybe it was the sign at the entrance of the town of Binic, proclaiming to be the capital of scallops that swayed her? We will never know what prompted her to break her habit on this particular day. It may sound like a small thing, but there are some things in this world you count on never changing, so when I witnessed her breaking her habit and changing her order after all these years, it was a small reminder to me that change is possible. Good news for all of us creatures.
Way too close-up of Crepe St. Jacques
She didn't go for the Poire Belle Helene!
le port du Binic
Suzy Ogé is an American born business woman living in The Hague, The Netherlands. 