How About A Resolution?

The following is an excerpt from an opinion article from today's NY Times.

The full article can be found at the NY Times Website.

“It is never too late or too early to care for the well-being of the soul,” Epicurus said, and so we make our lives a study of ourselves.

We need a moment in the year when we look at ourselves, weigh our good and bad habits, evaluate our conduct as a doctor evaluates our health during an annual examination, so we can strive for a way of life that is wiser and more responsible.

If the end of the year brings a flood of resolutions to change, it is because we are faced with an existence that is invaded by the routine, by the rush of demands. We can’t bear it. We know that another life exists, more beautiful, more passionate, one that laziness and apathy keeps us from attaining.

I have to break with time to overcome my obstacles, to rediscover myself, to be myself in all innocence. I can change my life, at least in some small way. Making resolutions demonstrates optimism, the desire to make oneself better, a faith, naive and beautiful at once, that declarations can spontaneously become actions, that saying means doing.

Oh, the glorious day of making a resolution, the belief that starting tomorrow I will be the pilot of my existence, that I will stop being the plaything of external circumstances, that I will govern myself. I’m better than I seem to be — a person obsessed by little irritants, addicted to talking nonsense — and I’m going to prove it to the world. The certainty that soon, thanks to my willpower, I will no longer be someone who is habitually late, a slave to my cellphone, a glutton, a distracted driver... that can galvanize me, prompt me to change, tear away my imperfect personality. Real life starts now; I can immediately free myself of my neuroses, correct myself. I can rid myself of the fear of failure and of the specter of the failures of the past.

Knowing that you can change your behavior, even by an iota, is essential for holding yourself in esteem. We’re often cynical about how resolutions are never kept, but we shouldn’t be. Resolutions are perhaps lies, but they’re lies of good faith, necessary illusions. As long as we can make them, we are saved, we can control the chaos of destiny; it doesn’t matter that we break them and that others view us with skepticism. Every resolution is good simply because it is declared. It is a comedy, perhaps, but it keeps us sane.

Posted by Jessica Silver, MAOM, Lic.Ac.
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