Number 118 - January 2012

Stumbling

So here we are once again at the year's turning. Like the Roman god Janus, we look backward and forward at the same time.

Janus - Vatican Museums

And we make resolutions.

And how did the 2011 resolutions work out for us? Do we even remember them? How quickly did we abandon them? These questions are not intended to make us feel bad; they're intended to show us that we're all in the same leaky boat. Year after year we resolve to eat less, exercise more, drink less or not at all, stop smoking, spend more time with the family, knuckle down and get that degree or promotion, read War and Peace. Okay, some of us succeed - don't gloat. But it almost seems as though, for most of us, our New Year's resolutions contain within themselves the seeds of their own destruction.

I've written almost yearly about New Year's resolutions, often about my own. Maybe I thought that making public my intentions, I'd feel more compelled to act on them. Things didn't quite work out.

So I've been thinking back on major decisions and changes, and none of them involved New Year's resolutions. They happened because something hit me upside the head. Giving up tobacco and alcohol, controlling weight, practicing meditation, even starting this newsletter, have come about when I felt an inner compulsion to act. Compared to the impulse of a keenly felt need, a New Year's resolution is thin soup.

The upside-the-head stuff can be effective, but I suspect most of us have ignored some pretty big hits. A lot of the time, I wasn't listening, I wasn't looking, I wasn't feeling. Sometimes it took multiple whacks for me to get the message. And I'm probably ignoring a few even as I type this.

So maybe the best resolution to make is to listen, look, and feel - to pay attention, to be as open as possible to the messages that come from without and within.

One more thing: an awkward stumble - illness, an unintended cruelty, a weekend we can't remember, a DUI citation, a major deadline missed - can be an opportunity to pay attention. But the first and obvious message from a stumble is to regain equilibrium, to try to make the insult go away. A saying attributed to Winston Churchill goes, "People stumble over opportunities every day, most just pick themselves up and carry on walking."

Happy New Year. M

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