I don't make New Year resolutions.
It's tough enough living day to day, making all the necessary changes I have to make with my life, to worry about adding some over-arching change to which I will aspire for the New Year. I'm enough of a mean-spirited, selfish, depressed, solipsist, that one resolution cannot make all the changes that need to be made.
So I don't do it.
Most people make so short-sighted and self-involved New Year resolutions that, typically, they'll have forgotten what they decided to change by the end of January, or at least most certainly by June.
That said, I believe the making of resolutions -- since I do make them (just daily, not annually). Resolutions offer us a time to give an account, if only to ourselves, about who we take ourselves to be and what we aspire to become. That kind of honest introspection is anything but self-involved and narcissistic.
With everyone one of us, there's a wide gulf between what we are meant to be and what we allow ourselves to become. Whether it involves our character, creativity or even beauty, the question of resolutions asks us to be introspective about who we want to become. Making a New Year resolution invites us to take a good look at our lives -- even our social ones -- and take an honest inventory about the nature of them. There's no time like one of the human makers of time to begin and continue that kind of inventory. So if you must make a resolution, the New Year is a good time for it.
What I do fear about most resolutions, though, is that they're entirely too selfish and prone to solipsism. We know we long for more, but that "more" tends to orbit around our own belly-buttons.
Dr King was right:
Perhaps this should be our New Years resolution.
It's tough enough living day to day, making all the necessary changes I have to make with my life, to worry about adding some over-arching change to which I will aspire for the New Year. I'm enough of a mean-spirited, selfish, depressed, solipsist, that one resolution cannot make all the changes that need to be made.
So I don't do it.
Most people make so short-sighted and self-involved New Year resolutions that, typically, they'll have forgotten what they decided to change by the end of January, or at least most certainly by June.
That said, I believe the making of resolutions -- since I do make them (just daily, not annually). Resolutions offer us a time to give an account, if only to ourselves, about who we take ourselves to be and what we aspire to become. That kind of honest introspection is anything but self-involved and narcissistic.
With everyone one of us, there's a wide gulf between what we are meant to be and what we allow ourselves to become. Whether it involves our character, creativity or even beauty, the question of resolutions asks us to be introspective about who we want to become. Making a New Year resolution invites us to take a good look at our lives -- even our social ones -- and take an honest inventory about the nature of them. There's no time like one of the human makers of time to begin and continue that kind of inventory. So if you must make a resolution, the New Year is a good time for it.
What I do fear about most resolutions, though, is that they're entirely too selfish and prone to solipsism. We know we long for more, but that "more" tends to orbit around our own belly-buttons.
Dr King was right:
In a real sense all life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.We could and should do more with our resolutions to acknowledge that interconnectedness. And 2018 is a fine year for it. Why not have more socio-political resolutions this year? What if each of us decided to become a better citizen of my city, state or nation? How many of us intuit that something has gone wrong with the social and political fabric? If King is right and we have this "inescapable network of mutuality", maybe our resolutions this year should reflect that mutuality, not deny it.
Perhaps this should be our New Years resolution.