January 7, 2006
Just a few days into the New Year, and already, most of us have reneged on our resolutions.
Who can keep them any way?
No one I know.
Johnny Carson, legendary late-night TV talk show host, said he knew of such a person. Johnny once said. “I knew a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and food. He was healthy right up to the time he killed himself.”
Max Lerner, U.S. political columnist, said about resolutions, “My only…resolution is to change some of my habits every year, even if for the worse.”
Likewise, we try, early in every January, to change our habits by setting lofty and stellar goals.
This time, we are certain we will succeed.
Consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, our resolutions do not make much sense, or perhaps, they are simply unfeasible. They will not work. Period.
See if you recognize some of these difficult-to-keep New Year’s resolutions as any of your own:
Quit smoking. Quit drinking. Go on a diet. Quit my job. Quit therapy. Get therapy. End a dead relationship. Find someone new. Travel more. Laugh more. Go to more movies. Stay home more. Read more books. Join a gym. Get out of debt. Be nicer. Teach the kids to be nicer. Do not be such a grump in the morning. Let go of resentments. Take out the trash without complaint. Quit whining. Take a vacation. Write or call special people more often. Fix up the house. Get long-term projects done on time. Work ahead. Do not procrastinate. Pay the bills on time. Start walking a mile a day. Send my Christmas cards out earlier. Do not send so many Christmas cards. Save money for next Christmas. Do not spend so much next Christmas. Simplify my life.
Did you find any of these on your list?
If so, there is one tiny problem—these resolutions are too general; therefore, impossible to keep.
As my grandmother used to observe, “What’s a body to do?”
Pondering this question, I decided to look at the most straight-forward and uncomplicated advice I could find—“tried and true” clichés that our grandparents used to make things “plain and clear” and, hopefully, make the New Year a success.
“It goes without saying” that our elders knew exactly how to live well; they did not “dance their way around it.” They just followed a few uncomplicated rules for living, and they repeated them over and over until they were cemented in our young minds as well as in their own.
They did not “make a mountain out of a molehill” because they knew that “actions speak louder than words.”
So, I figure, if one says their simple rules often, the rules themselves will provide an answer to just about any problem life may throw one’s way in the coming year.
Who needs traditional resolutions!
This list of simple rules, instead of resolutions, may be all we need in our New Year’s quest for a better year ahead:
“There is no time like the present”--covers nearly all procrastination, exercise and work issues. If the trash needs to be taken out, well, there is no time like the present. “Never bite the hand that feeds you”— works nicely to get along better with unruly and disrespectful dependents. If the offspring get a bit too impertinent, just remind them, “Never bite the hand…” “Save for a rainy day”—handles the money issues and is a simple solution to nearly all the financial problems that may come our way. “All things in moderation”— speaks to food, drink, smoke, and spending habits.
Or, try any of these simple clichés that may work better than our usual broad-spectrum resolutions:
And sometimes, it is OK, according Rhett Butler, to think to ourselves, “Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn.”
If our grandparents’ advice and Gone With the Wind do not cut it for you, then try a New Year’s recommendation, credited to the Romans.
Legend has it that the Romans used to throw colored stones in a jar each day beginning with the advent of a New Year. If they had a good day, a lucky day, they would throw a white stone in the urn. If it was a bad day, they would put a black stone in the jar. At the end of the year, they would count the stones to see how the year turned out.
Legend also has it that at the end of each year, there would always be more white stones than black in the urn!
“At the end of the day,” may you be like the Romans who measured the good fortune of each year, “one day at a time.”
