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It is New Year's Day.
Per usual, I didn't get around to making any resolutions. I find it sufficient to dust off my list from last year, and work on the ones I never got around to. Plenty of folk cover the gamut for me on 43things.com. A few I liked this year: Keep a notepad of awesome moments. Dance in the rain (someone not from Seattle). Sing a song at the top of my lungs. Find a beautiful down-to-earth-financially-well-off woman, who isn't picky.My favorite two create quite the conundrum: one is to be happy and the other is to fall in love. Good luck making that work.
I'm more in line with the two men I overheard talking on the ferry. "How's your memory? Do you take anything for it?" "Yes, I take medication. Two gingko and this other good stuff, but I can't remember what it's called."
Some people are obsessive list-makers. The payoff? That reassuring stab of ecstasy, from crossing off a completed task. (Some of you put stuff on your list you've already done just so you can cross it off.)
I have nothing against lists, per se. (I have my own . . . somewhere on my desk.) My problem is with the marriage of lists and our need to define any spiritual quest by our productivity-fixated culture. By that measurement, everything we do must be "results oriented, qualifiable, and relentlessly upbeat." So, we put a premium on public opinion and looking busy, so that no one will suspect we are loafing.
I did my best to stay home this past week, eschewing the time-honored post-Christmas ritual--the rattle and hum of commerce and swarm gift exchange. Although I did think about New Year resolutions, because I received an email that told me to do so. I will admit that there is something visceral about resolutions, with the eternal hope for a new start. Not to mention that we've made an industry of it. It helps if you resolve to undertake something ambitious. As if there's a resolution contest.
(Of course there is nothing magical about January 1. In the Middle-Ages, Christians changed New Year's Day to December 25, the birth of Jesus. Then they changed it to March 25, a holiday called the Annunciation. In the sixteenth century, Pope Gregory XIII revised the Julian calendar, and the celebration of the New Year was returned to January 1. As far as I know, we kept it at January 1 so that Dick Clark could have a job.)
Truth is, I'm not a resolution kind of guy. Mostly because it makes little sense to tell people I want to lose 20 pounds every year, while I'm eating chocolate cake and sipping a 20-yr-old Port Wine. Plus, I have a hard time making up my mind. Don't get me wrong. Change is good. We are, none of us (adults), victims. We choose. And I believe in "Living with Intention." Resolution is from the Latin resolutio, or resolvere meaning "to loosen or dissolve again," (re- + solvere) which was the original meaning of resolve. In other words, I will "determine or decide upon a course of action." It was first used in English around 1523.
But here's the deal. Change is one thing. But to assume that my life only begins after I move away from who I am now means that I will never find a place of acceptance.
As I was thinking about resolutions, I realized that I actually did have one. I want to clean my garage. This is an admirable idea until I look at the thermometer, which reads 37 degrees (inside the garage). I prayed for an exemption, and changed my resolution. Now, I want to heat my garage. I went shopping for a wood stove.
What tickles me is the way we've turned resolutions into an industry designed to sell products we cannot live without. Sure, resolutions are fun and lighthearted, but there's just enough of an expectation to make you think twice. On the TV (a commercial during the football game, while I'm scarfing chips and guacamole), I'm told that I will not just lose weight in the NEW YEAR. They guarantee it! (Oh yes. After you buy their product.)
I'm with Calvin on this. He is talking with Hobbes one day.
Hobbes: Whatcha doing?
Calvin: Getting rich!
Hobbes: Really?
Calvin: Yep. I'm writing a self-help book! There's a huge market for this stuff. First, you convince people there's something wrong with them. That's easy because advertising has already conditioned people to feel insecure about their weight, looks, social status, sex appeal, and so on. Next, you convince them that the problem is not their fault and that they're victims of larger forces. That's easy, because it's what people believe anyway. Nobody wants to be responsible for his own situation. Finally you convince them that with your expert advice and encouragement. They can conquer their problem and be happy!
Hobbes: Ingenious. What problem will you help people solve?
Calvin: Their addiction to self-help books! My book is called, "Shut up and stop whining: How to do something with your life besides think about yourself."
Hobbes: You should probably wait for the advance before you buy anything.
Calvin: The trouble is; If my program works, I won't be able to write a sequel.
(Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes.)
We live in a culture where we can't get away from the notion that there's just one piece of knowledge--or information or advice or prayer or instruction or divine intervention--between us and happiness.
The other alternative is to forget resolutions, and go with the time-honored New Year good luck rituals, from around the world. They are believed to bring good fortune and prosperity in the coming year.
Did you know that in WALES, at the first toll of midnight, the back door is opened and then shut to release the old year and lock out all of its bad luck. Then at the twelfth stroke of the clock, the front door is opened and the New Year is welcomed with all of its luck.
In CHINA, every front door is adorned with a fresh coat of red paint, red being a symbol of good luck and happiness. Although the whole family prepares a feast for the New Year, all knives are put away for 24 hours to keep anyone from cutting themselves, which is thought to "cut" the family's good luck for the next year.
Even here in the UNITED STATES, at midnight we kiss whoever is close by, standing under a holly sprig because the legend says that a kiss is purification into the new year.
Our winter garden is a picture of simple elegance now, the lawn etched silver with hoarfrost, and the structure of the garden unambiguous, with the "bones" of trees and woody evergreen shrubs. I walk the garden, happily, knowing there is little work to be done. A almost half-moon rests in the eastern sky. And as I walk, I realize that I do, in fact, have a resolution or two.
1. I will never give up an emphasis on neglected trifles. (This from Angelo Pellegrini, "The neglected trifles: the garden, the cellar, the simple pleasure of the dinner hour, a scrupulous husbandry in the home, the quiet joy of modest achievement." The Unprejudiced Palate.)
Live a balanced life--learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Robert Fulghum
2. I will give up my need to know exactly where I am going. Why not let the road of this coming year unfold in wonderful, challenging, and unexpected ways? Is control really that important?
And one more, if I have time. 3. I would like to design packaging for CDs that does not require two hours and a weapons-grade machete to open it.
Have a blessed and delight-filled and peaceful New Year.
Yesterday I had a good morning. Once again when I recollect myself, I again find the same simple demands of God: gentleness, humility, charity, interior simplicity; nothing else is asked of me. And suddenly I saw clearly why these virtues are demanded, because through them the soul becomes inhabitable for God and for one's neighbor in an intimate and permanent way. They make a pleasant cell of it. Hardness and pride repel, complexity disquiets. But humility and gentleness welcome, and simplicity reassures. The 'passive' virtues have an eminently social character.
Raissa Maritain (Rassia's Journal)
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