I used to make New Year’s resolutions. I would resolve to lose weight, exercise, read more, write more, whatever my passion was at the time, do it more and hopefully improve.
Now I make no resolutions at all, because to me the time marker is insignificant and merely symbolic. There’s nothing explicitly special about the second before midnight and the second after. Just like there’s no difference between this second and the next. Why do we celebrate the earth circling the sun (again) by making promises to ourselves (and often failing)? Seems like an odd idea for a party, to me.
Perhaps my illnesses have made me more cynical, or perhaps less cynical, depending on how you look at it. I don’t deride the New Year’s celebrations—the fireworks, the dropping balls every hour around the earth are a unifying experience—a time when many of us contemplate life and its meaning and how we can be better people. I’m not against resolutions or New Year’s parties—don’t get me wrong. But what my illness has taught me is that every second is another chance to make a resolution, to renew my vows to myself and others, to reflect on my life and how I can be a better me.
OK, to be honest, I have to say that due to my sleep disorder, I am unable to stay awake until midnight anyway, so Greg and I celebrated the New Year on the east coast (we’re in Seattle) while we watched Meet John Doe and drank hard cider and ate some shortbread I’d made for the holidays. We clinked glasses at 9:00 (PST), finished the movie, and went to bed, just as usual. No resolutions, no promises, nothing to break or fail or miss or cry over when I’m not the perfect person I said I’d be after a busy holiday full of food and spending, not to mention the champagne that might be affecting my optimistic resolutions for the year.
My idea of a resolution is a choice I make about discipline—and I can (and do) that any second I want to. And I’m never perfect about it, but at least there’s no list of resolutions that I’ve broken; only a disappointing moment when I realize I’ve dropped the ball (again) and have to recommit myself to whatever discipline I’m trying to establish.
But now I’m thinking Wait—perhaps celebrating the day of a New Year isn’t so trivial after all. Perhaps it’s a wonderful time to renew ourselves, all at the same time. Extend the holiday spirit for another week, and you have people all over who can agree on what holiday we’re celebrating, at the very least. Yes, there are culturally different times to celebrate, but the Gregorian calendar is the internationally accepted calendar, ergo the New Year is the one unifying holiday around the world—a 24-hour symphony of fireworks and champagne glasses clinking and heartfelt bellows of “Happy New Year!” from every corner of the earth.
Maybe I am more affected by the New Year than I thought. No resolutions to break, but I will try once again to establish some discipline in my life; without employment and the structure it supplies (or implies), discipline is difficult for me.
So maybe I’ll just be more disciplined about being disciplined. I want to pray more. I want to read my Bible and study it every day, and not just for fifteen minutes. I want to absorb myself in it, study it, learn it, open my conservatively-raised mind to the heights and widths and depths of it.
Does that constitute a resolution? I hope not, because I missed yesterday already.
