My New Year’s Resolution

It’s been a few days. How is every doing with their resolutions? Me? I didn’t make any. After years of making fake ones, forgetting to make any until March, making unrealistic ones, not remembering what they were after two weeks and just trying to fit in with the masses; I determined to stop bullshitting myself.

Of all the improvements and changes we want to make in our lives, how many of those are really self-centered? Are you doing these things for you or to fit in? Is it just tradition to change your life on January 1st? Is there truly something about the changing of a calendar that makes us want to change? Why didn’t we think of these things before? Or what is it about January 1^st that makes it easier to do so, if it’s easier at all.

Sometime in June or July I started to question “traditions”. There is nothing wrong with tradition. I questioned a lot of things. I questioned our motivations. I questioned our priorities. I questioned the: who, what, when, where, how and why of just being ourselves. There IS something wrong with not questioning ourselves.

Within our individual spirituality, it’s much easier to fall back on dogma and doctrine than it is to deal with what’s right in front of our faces.  What’s right in front of us is our self. Whether or not we make resolutions or any changes in our lives we have priorities that guide our decisions. Those priorities should be controlled by us but if we remain afraid to address our self, then our priorities are controlled by a myriad of outside forces: tradition, emotion, other people, buildings, institutions, and holidays. All things which are not bad at all except for the fact that we are being held back by something!

So many of us are so close to our breakthrough, we can taste it. We can see it. Sometimes we think we can touch it. So we reach but there’s that something. All those outside forces can become that something if we don’t deal with our selves. Many of us have all the answers but none of the courage to face ourselves in the mirror and make our selves do what we know is the right thing to do.

So we turn to our outside stuff. We put our most important step off until next year. Now next year is here and tradition tells us to make some resolutions. Why not? Let’s lose some weight. Why don’t we remodel the house? Maybe it’s time to tell off all the people who’ve been getting on our nerves all year. It all sounds good.

But forgive me for asking so many questions all the time. I have to do it though. Why New Years Day? Why haven’t we made any changes before? Is October really that shitty of a month that you don’t want to make changes? Are you having too much fun in April? Why are we waiting on the calendar to tell us what to do?

One resolution I heard was something like – I resolve to stop putting up with the BS. I wish I could remember who it was. I would try to make them famous. Maybe its better I don’t remember, because one thing was missing. When are we going to stop putting up the main bull-shitter in our lives? That is, when will we stop bullshitting ourselves?

In our day to day lives, we talk a lot of shit. We talk the most shit to ourselves though. We say we want to start eating healthy for the New Year but we woke up on January 3^rd (We party that hard!) hung-over. We must have fried food and A LOT of it. Lately, I’ve noticed people starting their resolutions later and later in the year. Let alone January, some people start in March.

There must be some magic to changing the calendar that allows us to be able to what we couldn’t do during the rest of the year. But if there is, how does it work. Do we need to only make certain resolutions? Do we need to make our resolutions more realistic?

I say none of that. The magic of New Years is in the myth of a fresh start. We get reminded of God’s forgiveness and our never-ending fresh starts.  We don’t have to wait for a particular calendar day to come around in order for us to make a change. All we have to do is remember that we can change. Any day!

If you have made a resolution or three this year, good luck. If you haven’t, good luck too. No matter which group you are in never forget that you can grow any day, at any time. It’s never too early or too late to take honest inventory of yourself and make some changes. Once we start learning, we don’t stop.

Never stop learning. Never stop growing. If you didn’t do so hot this season and you need another holiday to jumpstart your growth, Ash Wednesday is February 22 this year. The Lenten season is the perfect time to fast and pray for a new direction.

Either way, good luck. You can do it!