When I was a young teen, I succumbed to the siren song of avarice and embarked on a criminal path that briefly changed my financial status and just as briefly, altered my moral compass. I was not long in the social badlands before I grew sick of my behavior and decided, “I don’t want to be this person.” I stopped doing the bad things I was doing and never returned to that life, and six decades later, managed to avoid being one of the 350,000 Americans who succumbed to the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. I spent the end of 2020 in loving conversation with an old friend, and animated telephone exchanges with my eldest child and my first grandchild. When I reviewed some posts on a social media site, I saw that people were discussing the resolutions that they would make for the new year, and wondered where the idea of New Year’s resolutions came from.
According to the Web site History.com, the ancient Babylonians are believed to have been the first people to have celebrations to welcome the new year, making promises to the gods to “pay their debts and return any objects they had borrowed.” The favor of the gods was won or lost on the success or failure of those early “resolutions.” Similarly, the Romans under Julius Caesar made sacrifices to the gods and promises of “good conduct for the coming year.” The English clergyman John Wesley created the Covenant Renewal Service in 1740, which featured readings from Scripture and “resolutions for the coming year.” In keeping with that 4,000-year-old tradition, it has been estimated that 45% of the people in this country will make New Year’s resolutions, but only 8% of them will succeed in keeping them.
On May 9th, 2010 (Mother’s Day) my eldest child asked me to give her the mother’s day present by quitting my habit of smoking cigarettes. I smoked the twelve left in my pack and have never smoked again. I just did it. I made no resolution to abstain, I just kept a commitment to my daughter. When my doctor told me that I had the “rich man’s disease,” gout, I startled her with a dramatic weight loss. When she expressed concern, I told her that my niece, a physician also, gave me a list of foods to increase and to avoid in my diet, and I did so. I also stopped drinking beer and whiskey: No more Rolling Rock and Jameson. I didn’t resolve to do so, I just kept a commitment to my health.
In 1987, the advertising agency of Wieden + Kennedy created a unifying slogan for the shoe and clothing giant, Nike, seeking to tie their diverse ads together with a tagline. Despite its grim inspiration (said to be from the execution of the murderer, Gary Gilmore) the slogan has tied Nike’s ads and merchandise into a recognizable bundle. When we see the slogan “Just Do It,” we know we’re dealing with Nike. Despite the fact that the doors to the pandemic year of 2020 have closed, the contents of the year leak into the next room, into 2021. And now comes the time when we resolve to do, to be, to read or write, to create or give, to love more and be less angry, to be better at doing better. We may be one of the 8% of resolution writers who manage to succeed in keeping them.
Let’s not make resolutions; when our reflections show us that there is something we want to change in ourselves, in our lives, let’s commit ourselves to just do it.
cjon3acd@att.net