The Sunnyvale Sun
Letters & Opinions
Holiday craziness stirs up resolutions once again
By Matt Baxter
The resolution business is once again in full swing. Mere weeks into the new year, most of us are resolving to make all kinds of changes in our lives, major and minor, which will catapult us into a higher state of consciousness. We will be the first truly transcendent human beings, and we will owe it all to a simple promise begat on that most auspicious of days, Jan. 1.
It would almost seem random, if we hadn't been here before, at exactly the same time and place. Every year the excessive and overblown winter holidays provoke many of our fellow citizens to make loud claims of how this new year is really going to be the one when we will be all we can be.
Honest introspection would illuminate the fact that we resolved to make virtually the same changes last year and that we flamed out in early '07 in a matter of days. Probably '06 as well, and every other year we can actually remember. Despite this hidden truth we adamantly proclaim our repeated intentions, with no hint of the irony that we are stuck in the most deep of ruts.
Apparently every 12 months we have all suffered enough short-term memory loss that we can heartily make a prognostication that mirrors its twin from just one year earlier.
If you have resolved to stop buying a daily fancy coffee drink and instead invest that $5 in a sensible mutual fund and eventually retire early, I wish you well, but we both know you are doomed. In the coming years you will need to empty out that retirement account just to pay for the gas for your car (to drive to the job you resolved last year to leave).
If you have resolved to join the local gym and work out consistently until you shed those Turkey-Day-to-New-Year's pounds, I wish you well, but we both know you are doomed. You may join, and you may even hop aboard an elliptical once or twice, but the crowd of Botox Babes and Steroid Studs will eventually drive you away.
If you have resolved to save the whales or the rainforest, or you are really ambitious and you have resolved to save the entire planet, I wish you well, but we both know you are doomed. Such projects are too big; they are beyond the scope of a single New Year Do-Gooder. Quit now before you disappoint yourself.
Not everyone, however, submits to this terrible annual tradition. Some people are impervious to the siren's call of the New Year's resolutions. I don't know if this is true for all teenagers, but it certainly is for the three that live in my house. It is clear that they see no need to change any of their own habits and behaviors.
The only thing they resolve to change is me. It turns out their lives would only improve if my habits and behaviors changed, such as allowing them more freedom, eliminating their bedtimes and having a more accessible wallet.
I have told them that that is not how New Year's resolutions work, but they haven't given up. They figure if resolutions don't work, perhaps subliminal messages might. That explains the notes I find written on my pillow in permanent marker.
When I told my wife that I wasn't offering any New Year's resolutions for '08, she gave me a distinctly unsettling look. She paused, stared at me with the light in her eyes slowly fading, and said virtually without breath, "Really? You couldn't, oh, I don't know, write something pleasant for a change? Something uplifting?"
She also warned most of our neighbors and our extended family members to refuse my calls over the past week or so. Apparently she was worried that my research on this topic might ostracize me even more. And when I say me, I mean her. The longer we are together the smaller her social circle seems to be.
We all just need to stop making New Year's resolutions. The promises are too steep, the changes too dramatic, to sustain them. Instead we must seek out minor modifications to who and what we are, and then we mustn't advertise them.
I think it is like a birthday wish. If you tell everyone in the room that you wished for a pony at the moment you blew out the candles on your cake, it just isn't going to come true. Of course, it wasn't going to come true anyway, but speaking the wish out loud certainly ensured that such a beast was not going to immediately appear in your back yard.
If you need to make a New Year's resolution, keep it to yourself. Save more if you want to, eat less if that sounds right, move more, hate less, give more, take less, love more--but talk about it all less. In fact, don't talk about it all.
Let someone else notice the changes you've made and feel the joy when they congratulate you. Then you will be truly transcendent.
Matt Baxter can be reached at mattbaxter@columnist.com.