(Reverse) Resolutions

Happy New Year!

It’s an arbitrary arrangement of time, but much like the winter solstice it arrives with a promise of renewal and return, an opportunity to try something new, or break patterns and habits we’d rather leave behind – what I like to call “the Great Cosmic Do-Over.”

Historically, these intentions for growth and change have arrived in the form of New Year’s Resolutions. I know I’ve made many in my lifetime. Over 50+ years I have resolved to:

• eat better
• exercise more
• quit soda
• quit chocolate
• quit fat
• quit complaining
• spend more time with the family
• spend more time with my writing
• spend more time volunteering
• spend more on charity,
• and basically turn myself into the perfect human being

By late February most of these past resolutions fell victim to everyday life and routine.

With the coming of the New Year, we are often running out of the gate like thoroughbreds. We make endless laps, unsure of where the finish line is, but we still run. We run to stand still, often, but we run nonetheless. Inertia makes it difficult for us to slow down, let alone stop, to see if we are even still on the right course. By the end of the year, the finish line in sight, we frequently discover that, despite our best intentions, we’ve entered the wrong race. “Oh, well,” we say. “There’s always next year.” And then we line up in our gates to wait for the starting bell. And the pattern repeats.

In America, most resolutions are centered on self-improvement. They are rarely aimed outwards. Nearly half of all those who make New Year’s resolutions fail them within the first two months.

And then several years ago, it hit me: “If this is the case, then why not just work the system to our advantage and make resolutions we’d be better off breaking in the first place?”

Here, then, is a list of resolutions, I firmly intend to break by the end of February:

• I resolve to repeat my mistakes.
• I resolve to completely disengage from my community.
• I resolve to take absolutely no part in the work of justice.
• I resolve to carry every petty grudge with me to my grave.
• I resolve to ignore my family.
• I resolve to never try and see the world from another’s vantage point.
• I resolve to make invisible all those around me who are suffering.
• I resolve to take care of myself first.

Whatever you resolve (or reverse-resolve), I wish you all the best in the year to come.