Avoiding Resolution

The first day of the New Year. I wake in early morning darkness and find myself thinking of ways I should be a better person than I am. How can I be better this year? I should remember more my vows to wake up fully and give my life unstintingly to heal the world. I should greet each morning with the joy of being alive at all. I should exercise more and eat better. I’m surprised and how many ways I can think of to improve myself.

I continue in this vein for some time, considering a wide range of New Year’s resolutions. Then remember that though I certainly should be a better person, there is really not much hope for me. I don’t mean this in a negative way, it’s just that after sixty-five years of effort to be someone else, I have made very little progress. Despite all my best intentions, I retain a deep and abiding sense of personal inadequacy. I am quite certain that I should be more than I am. I should be kinder and wiser. I should be more disciplined and happier. I should be less afraid and more adventurous.

But as the years sweep by and my friends grow older, not much essential changes.

Though I’m a morning person, I’m not especially happy or optimistic in the morning. I abandon the warm cave of my bed reluctantly and reassume the vertical posture only with deep ambivalence. The engine of my self starts slowly – always sputtering and backfiring and threatening breakdown. But if I bear with myself; have some tea, do some writing and meditation (or even if I don’t) – I almost always find my way back to some mysterious engagement with life.

Something grabs my attention – some new problem or delight appears that interests me more than my familiar dark brooding and I’m saved from myself once more.

So this New Year’s Day, I pray once again that the undeserved grace of life may sustain me. That I may continue traverse the wondrous and terrifying landscapes of life with as much love, wisdom and courage as I can muster. And that my life may, in some small way, be a gift to the many beings and processes that surround and enfold me.