I (sometimes) Hate New Year's Resolutions

Gold and Silver, Toots is playing.

Most of the time, it depresses me to hear New Year's resolutions. When zealous friends tell me what they’re going to do differently in the New Year, I think: yeah, right, while saying, “Sounds good.” I do want those better things for my friends, but I think it takes more than just announcing it.

The pressure of holidays generally irritates me. I like the rituals and the chance to rest, but I do not like when holidays turn into mothers spinning a perfect day for their families. I do not like it when later these mothers are found lying, dizzy and stressed, in a puddle after the storm has passed. That has been me. I don’t like it when all of us are bound by expectations.

Why do we have to eat turkey? Why do we have to bake cookies? Why do we have to cut out red hearts? Why do I have to buy fireworks? Sometimes I just don’t feel like it.

Philip and I try to not put on the pressure for birthdays and Valentine’s Day and all the rest. I just wish we could show each other how much we love each other everyday, not only on the holidays. That’s the shame of New Year’s resolutions. Why not make resolutions when you are at a time and in a place to actually make change? Like on April 13 or June 31?

Philip actually made some good resolutions this morning. He wrote them on the back of an envelope and passed them over to me for a looksy. I was reading my newspaper and drinking my tea, a sacred moment in my day. I read the 75 to 100 words he had scrawled and without a comment or an eyebrow raised, I passed them back to him. He needed a little more and demanded it. “They’re great,” I said and they are. And they are even do-able. They are things he’s already working on in an effort to be a better person. I told him I’d like to tattoo them to my hand and read them back to him when he needs a pep talk.

It got me thinking that maybe I do like New Year’s resolutions—just not the frustrating ones. So I thought and thought about what I should resolve to do. Then I wrote on my hand in black pen: SEEK GOD. TRUST GOD. SURRENDER. Then I showed Phil. He nodded and smiled.

This has been a pattern for us. When we talk about our life’s goals or our priorities or the essence of life we will go on for a while about things like justice or happiness or joy or contentedness or accomplishment or something. However nerdy it may seem, we like to take notes on these conversations. He’ll write a treatise on the topic. I will maybe write a few bullet points and then I will say something like, “It all comes down to glorifying God with your life. I could just write, ‘Glorify God.’” This drives him nuts. It seems like an over-simplication to him, but to me it is a unification of all of these ideals.

Maybe that’s why I don’t like all of those typical resolutions. It seems like a lot of toiling and striving and frantic, busy behavior with no really meaningful end. Of course, Phil’s resolutions this year would fall under a “Seek God” column, so they’re alright.