I, Yolanda White, being of fairly sound mind and increasingly more sound body, herby solemnly swear, as the goddess is my witness, to never make another New Year’s Resolution, again, so long as I live – till’ death do I part
To rephrase a celebrated children’s fable, “I will not make New Year’s resolution, Sam I am. I will not make them here or there, not in a box or with a fox, I do not like resolutions, Sam I am, I will not make them anywhere.”
By January, the time when “tisn’t the season to be jolly” anymore, I really decide that I hate New Year’s resolutions, like snakes hate belt buckles. Undoubtedly, it isn’t the fact that I have failed miserably each year that I tired to set various goals, such as loosing my grip on the Robert’s Butter Pecan custard and replacing the buttery treat with a menu of dead leaves, roots and legumes.
Nor is it that I have fought vehemently at the onset of several New Year’s past, to drop that couple extra pounds of fat and tow their greasy remains around in a giant plastic bag, atop a red flyer wagon, smiling, waving. It isn’t even my many-made, seriously vigorous attempts to drop a few pesky, “not-so-significant” others from my adoring flock of half-hearted potential male suitors, which render me resolutionless.
I simply detest a day –a time of year – where every hard-hearted, wanton debaucher, compulsive spender, and insatiable glutton around, vow to do things differently, for real this time, again. And this is despite the fact that all year long they are bitterly mean and self-absorbed, like the people driving by offering me the quintessential finger because my outside brake light doesn’t work regularly.
Despised too is the ne’er-do-well manboy who has cheated and cheated on his all-too-forgiving girlfriend, only to start his year anew-craftily cheating, no doubt! And don’t let me go there about greed, one of the seven deadliest sins. I have been slowed in far too many fast food lines by people who just had to have their fast food still faster then me. These speedsters skipped me, despite my being first in line.
I don’t feel that these are petty occurrences, but rather important lil’ incidents in my life that render me impotent and mistrusting of people who swear to be better at living and experiencing their lives, but only beginning in January.
Why not be better all year long? That’s not molecular rocketry? Why not make a resolution each and every day – to make a lasting behavior change? It’s almost as if some people screw up and screw off all year round and in the middle of their trough of thanksgiving turkey, begin to be haunted by a frightening December approaching, and an even more horrifying January. A January where they look in the mirror and decide that they don’t like who they are, what they see, or what they have become; when any day they could have chosen to change.
Watching droves and droves of “gung-hoers” dive in headfirst to a New Year’s resolution cesspool, then hit their heads on the bottom of an empty promise – is painful for me to see.
Perhaps because I make yearlong attempts to listen to people, give of my time and myself, and be truthful, thrifty and tolerant of things and people – some of which really trip my trigger. Still, I won’t wait till the year is almost over and resolve to be better, when being at your best is a daily voluntary act that, with practice, can be become as natural as breathing.
So while people are hastily making New Year’s resolutions for 2011, I will be gritting and grinding my teeth, but happily. Happily, because I know that my efforts at living well don’t begin with lofty last – minute goals, marked by too much booze and pressure from other resolvers.
I resolve not to resolve. My resolution for this New Year can summed up best in the following proclamation poem. Perhaps you will be moved to resolve yourselves daily and not become constipated with promise to resolve all at once.
To be continued…
Adapted from An Anti-Resolver’s Resolve by Yolanda D. White in Riverwest Currents, 2005
