A New Year (with) Resolution

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Don’t look now, but your 2019 calendar is expiring.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

With it, goes another year.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

And another decade.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Amazing. Seems like only last year we shrank behind our water bottles and food supplies amassed in our basements in fear of Y2K. Remember? The Millennium Bug defect was going to throw a wrench into technology’s chronometers and wreak havoc around the world.

Fast-forward 20 years, and a whole generation of college students is too young to remember that scare. More than a few of them probably wonder what we were drinking from our thermal mugs to get so upset back then.

If we were concerned about the lights going out in 2000, imagine the panic-stricken horror they’d face now if they thought their cellphones would die at the stroke of midnight.

Safe to Look Ahead

But, no such threat looms in our immediate future (that we know of, at least), and from the vantage point of this kitchen table, it looks like we will have clear sailing right into 2020. The only thing that remains on the 2019 to-do list is to make our 2020 to-do list of New Year’s Resolutions.

Admit it—you still do make a list, even if just one or two wishes. Somewhere in the fog of holiday calories that transformed most people’s trim waists into floatation devices, you still harbor the hope that “Next year, I’ll…” About 45% of us still cling to that ritual at the beginning of each year, whether by formal proclamations in the presence of co-workers, or little scraps of paper tucked in a sock in the top dresser drawer.

Sure, only 8% of us will succeed all the way to December 31, 2020, but it’s sort of like buying a lottery ticket—maybe I will be one of the lucky ones who can see my resolutions to the end and finally achieve (fill in the blank). And although the success rate appears dismal, studies show nonetheless that people who make these goals are 10 times more likely to change their behavior—if only a little—than the nonlist-makers.

So, we keep the hope alive and make another list.

If you make resolutions, you’re in good company. The art of making New Year’s Resolution lists is hardly new.

Somewhere around 4,000 years ago, according to knowing historians, the first Babylonian optimist took out a soft clay tablet and wedge-tipped reed stylus, and wrote the first New Year’s resolutions. Like most of us, he didn’t keep a copy of it, but the list probably went something like this:

1. Loseth weight so to look good in new silk shawl at King’s wedding.
2. Exercise daily at the coliseum so to out-runneth from tigers.
3. Save abundant shekels to rent-eth a boat for Tigris River vacation.

If the afore-mentioned historians are right, most of the resolutions involved a quid pro quo arrangement. Promises were made to the pagan gods to live better lives, and in return, the gods bestowed blessings on them during the year.

(This information—though repeated in several sources—became suspect when the same Babylonian web search turned up “evidence” that the Babylonians invented the seven-day week. Hmmm…correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t recall the Book of Genesis referring to the Babylonian calendar as each day of creation was molded into time.)

New Day. New Way. Same Old Human Being.

With clay tablets and wedge-tipped reeds no longer readily available, most of us modern day “resolutioners” settle for paper and pen. Or computer and printer. Or—no surprise—Google Play even has New Year’s resolution apps. Yes, there’s an app for that, too.

What do we resolve? Researchers say our resolutions usually deal with self-improvement, most often weight loss, exercise and smoking/alcohol cessation. Looking back at my own lists over the years I notice a certain pattern.

January 1, 1970

1. Lose 10 pounds
2. Exercise for a marathon race
3. Get together more often with friends

January 1, 1980

1. Lose 20 pounds
2. Exercise for the fitness benefits
3. Write more letters to friends

January 1, 1990

1. Lose 30 pounds
2. Exercise for the preservation of the waistline
3. Email more often to friends

January 1, 2000

1. Lose 40 pounds
2. Exercise for the preservation of the knees
3. Skype more often with friends

January 1, 2010

1. Lose 50 pounds
2. Exercise for the preservation of the heart
3. Text more often with friends

And, January 1, 2020:

1. Lose 5 pounds and keep it off!
2. Exercise to maintain mobility.
3. Find my friends…

Wait a minute. I think that I got this resolution stuff all wrong.

I’ve spent the past 50 years concentrating on the outcome, when I should have concentrated on building the character.

Succeed at losing weight (the outcome), and I can zip up my old jeans without a block-and-pulley system. Succeed in having resolution (the character), and there’s nothing I can’t do. Why stop at exercising at the gym? It’s a big world out there.

Therefore, in 2020 I will work for steadfast resolution to:

1. Lose my lazy mind habits (computer solitaire, Facebook snooping, pointless gossip) and replace them with the search for truth (yes, it exists) and courage to live life without walls.
2. Exercise the opportunities to speak up and defend those who can’t defend themselves.
3. “Friend” more people—not just on Facebook, but with arms wide open—on this journey through life.

A Decade from Now, What Will I Wish I’d Wished?

While I’m at it, there’s no time like the present to begin this Decade with firm resolution:

1. To stop participating in petty “crises” that rarely matter in 6 months.

2. To “friend” myself, with all my flaws, and renew exploration into my abilities and talents as if I had the rest of my life ahead of me—because I do.

3. To do what is best—not what is convenient or what is acceptable—but to pursue the best course of action in my day-to-day doings.

4. To invest in things when I know I will lose. In the coming decade I want to participate in things that are guaranteed personal losses—the education of a Guatemalan child, buying a warm jacket for an unknown boy, furnishing bowls of soup at a homeless shelter, crying for someone on the prayer chain who is hurting.

Let me do these things, but not because it will make me “feel good” or in hopes that “God will bless me.” Instead, I resolve to do them because it’s how this world spins right, and because all along my journey people have made “losing investments” in me, many of which I’ll never know about.

Finally, I resolve to toss fears into the wind and take more chances. As the old Mama Cass song said, “Make your own special music, Sing your own special song…even if nobody else sings along.”

What have I got to lose besides a cart full of regrets at the end of my trail?

Happy New Year.