So far, not even a week in, 2025 doesn't feel any different than 2024 except more ominous. We have a very large monster waiting behind the stage curtain, eagerly anticipating its own power. That's reason enough to approach this year with caution and wariness and fear. Combined with other unresolved evils (wars, famine, poverty) there aren't a lot of positive incentives poking us forward. So we need to create our own.
Resolutions usually fail because (in my opinion) they are too grand or they imply character defects (i.e. need to lose weight, read more books, cook better food, be nicer) that are not going to change just because you tell yourself it's time for that change to happen. Instead of a resolution, perhaps we need to embrace uncertainty and hesitation. Instead of insisting on getting more exercise, for example, one could simply say "maybe I will go outside now and then and look at the birds." Nothing major there, just a hesitant idea of looking around the yard. Or instead of planning on eating less processed food, one could say "maybe I will start reading the list of ingredients before I buy anything." Not even deciding NOT to buy the product, just adding an action (reading the ingredients) to the process of shopping.
Maybe I am just blowing smoke here. But sometimes life is difficult, every day, day in and day out, and making a resolution and then failing at it will only make life more difficult. And send you down another spiral, another bout of depression waiting at the end of that tailspin. No one needs that, of course. What we need is to be lifted up out of that tailspin. We need hope and a tiny bit of happy and some calm waters ahead.
So my resolution this year is the same as always: absolutely no resolutions. Just an idea or two to change the routine a tiny bit, to get out of the rut, to not let the swamp of current events (and the dungeon of events to come) kill us. More smelling the flowers, more stopping for a coffee, more daydreaming. That's the ticket!
