| « | Further Thoughts On Sex And Catholicism |
»
|
|
Saturday, January 01, 2005
New Year’s Resolutions, 2005
Happy New Year, gentle reader. Over the years, your Curmudgeon has heard some pretty strange New Year's resolutions. There was one fellow who vowed no longer to skydive drunk. There was another who renounced sex with three women at once. There was one woman who resolved never again to wear high heels. There was another who forswore unsatisfying sex with random strangers. And there was a little girl of nine, a cherubic vision in blond curls, who promised never again to fantasize about killing her mommy and daddy and setting fire to the house.
Even stranger than the resolutions themselves was that the aforementioned persons chose to tell your Curmudgeon about them. But that's one of the subjects of this rant.
Have you decided to alter your life in a fashion you've made into a New Year's resolution? No, don't say what it is; you can't possibly top the ones above, nor, for that matter, a number of others your Curmudgeon is sure you'd never believe. Rather, consider the following questions about your New Year's resolution and its adoption:
- Have you made this resolution before?
- Is it within your capacity, as you've come to know it?
- Will it require the active cooperation of persons unlikely to give it?
- Do you feel an urge to publicize it? If so, why?
- If you fail to fulfill it, how will you feel? Will you strive to forget that you made it?
- If you succeed, will you change your behavior in any other was as a consequence? If you had resolved to keep the matter to yourself, would success to any degree change that decision?
- Why did you wait for the turn of the year to make it?
Striving to be better is an admirable thing. The tradition of the New Year's resolution, to the extent that it assists in human improvement, can hardly be criticized. But as the list of questions above suggests, it has some self-aggrandizing, self-delusive, and procrastinative aspects that tend in the opposite direction.
Self-improvement campaigns are very much like charity. It's in their nature that talking them up reduces the virtue in them. When they fail, they can dramatically reduce one's sense of self-worth. And because they're hard, they're unusually prone to deferment. All of this springs from their central commonality as extensions of the self.
To give of oneself for others' benefit is to expand one's circle of care. Similarly, to increase one's personal quality, whether it be in the physical, intellectual, emotional or spiritual domain, is to become more than what one previously was.
Growth is always a risky business, even though it's the sole alternative to decay and death.
Please be careful about your New Year's resolutions. Don't make a slew of them; no one can work effectively on more than one or two things at a time. Don't promise more than you could ever deliver. If it's within your power, don't tell your resolutions to others. If not, try to keep your statements modest and appropriately humble; among other things, that will set a good example for others. Don't demand that others help you to meet the goals you've set for yourself. Most important, if you're serious about them, set to work on them right away; well begun is half done.
And have a happy and secure 2005.
Comments
There are some resolutions where the help of third parties can be valuable, and depending on who those third parties are, requesting their help is not necessarily unreasonable.
That being said, I have only one resolution...I’ve made it before and it’s sorta worked. It does require the cooperation of third parties, but I have no intention of framing it as a New Year’s resolution when telling them about it (for reasons that would be obvious if I told you what it was, which I’m not going to, because even if you hadn’t made it plain you didn’t care, I wouldn’t have assumed you did).
I’ll settle for continuing to sorta work...it is, after all, a very long-term goal.
And it’s good, I think, to take stock once a year of where we are, where we want to be, whether we’re on the right road to get there, and how to change course if we’re not. New Year’s being a traditional time for such contemplation, I feel no need to break with tradition...but I’ll concede that there’s no _objective_ reason I couldn’t do it just as well in July.
Posted by Matt on 01/01/2005 at 05:08 PMI don’t usually bother with them every year because I know in reality I will forget them the first week into the new year.
It’s all fun, but I don’t take them too seriously really. I have some this year, but some are just things I would like to try to do this year. Heh, not much a resolve in “try to do”!
Posted by Heather on 01/02/2005 at 05:22 AM
Comment Form
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
