Every new year, and sometimes more often than that, we resolve to get healthy, work better and love more.
This tradition of resolution dates back to the Babylonians, when they would resolve to pay back debt and return stuff they borrowed. The Romans made resolutions each new year, as did medieval knights who affirmed their chivalry by pledging the solemn peacock vow.
According to decades’ worth of Top 10 lists, Americans often resolve to travel more, go back to college, volunteer, meet new people, be nicer to our families, get organized, save money, get a better job, reduce stress, try different kinds of foods and go to church more often.
These are all good things, but perhaps better than an annual resolve to change is simply to adopt the realization that every day we have the opportunity to rectify what bothers us, what we do and how we treat others.
Change is, as they say, a personal choice.
Resolutions often stem from life challenges, and who could have known that better than Helen Keller?
Born in 1880, she got sick as a toddler and became deaf and blind at 19 months. Her parents, who were well educated, taught her a form of sign language used in their home and eventually hired a tutor and enrolled her in school. Keller, the first blind and deaf person to ever earn a bachelor of arts degree, graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904.
It would be fair to say she faced enormous obstacles growing up, enough to bring gloom and frustration to just about anyone, but she once said “your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”
And, she did.
That’s not a resolution. That’s a motto of daily life and accepting change.
And something award-winning director and screenwriter Steven Spielberg embraces.
“All of us every year,” he said, “we’re a different person. I don’t think we’re the same person all our lives.”
That’s true. But, really, we’re not the same person every day because what we do, what we endure and what we celebrate changes us incrementally or massively, depending on the circumstances.
Having a baby? Massive change.
Earning a degree? Massive change.
Straightening out your closet? Incremental, but it sure feels good.
Too often, new year’s resolutions learn toward perfection. We resolve to try to do better, be more efficient and more enthusiastic.
But, consider the words of accomplished English author Neil Gaiman, who suggests that mistakes are good “because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.”
Fear can stop us from doing a great many things.
It can stop us from meeting new people or going to new places, from starting a family, from pursuing an education or leaving a job.
Gaiman offers this interesting new year’s wish for himself and others: “Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”
That’s encouragement to be brave. It’s also permission to fail.
Eloise Ristad, a musician who suffers from stage fright, wrote a book titled “A Soprano on Her Head,” examining her struggles. In that book, she makes the point that “when we give ourselves permission to fail … we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.”
Consider the new year a year a new opportunities to excel, even though we may experience some failures along the way. Learn from the failures and celebrate the accomplishments every minute of every day.
We wish you all a happy and healthy new year.
jmeyer@sunjournal.com
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