Viva la Resolution
My practice resolution this month taught me what everyone who has ever made a resolution already knows: resolutions are difficult to keep.
“Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. To-day, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient short comings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.1 ”
There are two things I’ve learned about why resolutions are so difficult to keep. The first is that resolutions require upkeep. Day-by-godforesaken-day intentionality. We tend to imagine the payoff of our goal and often fail to execute its mundane to-do list. It’s easy to lose site of big, sexy goals in the crush of decidedly unsexy daily chores.
The second is that perfectionism is a fearsome foe. At the end of my month of practicing resolution, I take exception with the second part of Franklin’s definition:
“Resolve to perform what you ought. PERFORM WITHOUT FAIL WHAT YOU RESOLVE.”
Oh, all I need to do is never slip up? Thanks, Franklin, why didn’t I think of that?!
Perform without fail what you resolve is problematic because it sets up a false dichotomy between success and failure. I don’t think failure is really the problem with keeping resolutions; I think the problem is in trying again. As Stephen King tells us:
“Resolution demands a sacrifice.2 ”
Franklin’s definition makes it far too easy to quit and resolution is far too long a road for that kind of dichotomous thinking. Resolution demands grit and it sacrifices old patterns of being that may be alluring and comfortable, but no longer serve us.
As I move forward with my own resolutions, I want to amend Franklin’s approach in a way that I feel is more beneficial to individuals and the community. Perform what you resolve with grit seems a wiser approach to me. Be patient and keep trying to perform what you ought. And when in doubt, listen to Neil Gaiman’s wish for you:
“Be kind to yourself in the year ahead.
Remember to forgive yourself, and to forgive others. It’s too easy to be outraged these days, so much harder to change things, to reach out, to understand.
Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin.
Meet new people and talk to them. Make new things and show them to people who might enjoy them.
Hug too much. Smile too much. And, when you can, love.3 ”
Be kind to yourself and others. Forgive yourself and others. Love yourself and others. And for goodness sake, keep trying. Especially when you’re not perfect at it. There’s no end of the good each of us could do if we resolve with that kind of grit.
Notes:
Image by Catherine Stovall from Pixabay
1. Twain, Mark. “New Year's Day.” Territorial Enterprise, 1 Jan. 1863.
2. King, Stephen. The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower. Scribner, 2004. p. 447
3. Gaiman, Neil. “Another Year.” Neil Gaiman's Journal, 31 Dec. 2016, 7:25 PM, journal.neilgaiman.com/2016/12/another-year.html.