The Only Resolution I’ve Ever Kept

I’ve started calling my two year old daughter Fickle Pickle.  I swear, she gets it from me and outwardly I’m all apologies over it. The truth is, I secretly congratulate her for inheriting a trait that will surely produce in her a complexity of character that leads to a lifetime of self scrutiny.  For better or worse, ahem.

I’ve had thirty five years of quarreling with myself, and some would say, thirty-five chances to resolve those quarrels.  But when the day with the loneliest number comes around the spinning earth each year, I’m more of the looking back sort.  Less resolved.

Some years I’ve cast my lot with the masses.  Exercise more.  Spend less time looking at a screen. Develop my talents.  Most years I’ve drawn the short stick, you know, the one that means this game doesn’t work in my favor.  So I’ve stopped casting lots-it’s an outdated way to choose a destiny anyway. And for those of us who thrive in gray areas, a list written with black ink on white paper is entirely too stark of a way to spend a year.

There was a year, though, of very particular historical permanence, that a hazy resolution was made.  Then it was kept to the great astonishment of one such hazy resolution maker. At this point you won’t be surprised that I am unable to articulate this resolution in one concise sentence, since perhaps I’ve succeeded in showing myself unable to be, well, concise.  The resolution went something like this:

You will stop striving.  You must stop striving.  You will throw your feet over the side of the bed each morning and accept the day that has been given to you.  You will approach hard people with open hands and limited expectations.  You will be ready to give and able to receive. You will be still this year.  You will notice and you will hear, and then you will respond.  You will not be motivated by guilt or pride.  Grace and love will be your theme this year.  You will.  Stop striving.  

It was a flag planted on my timeline.  A hallmark.  I guess it was more of a change in outlook than a resolution. More of an argument for a better way of living.  Whatever I was doing wasn’t working for me and no amount of exercise was going to change me in the way I really wanted to be changed.

And it still serves to change.  This resolution has evolved through the years as I have, rising and falling like a wave to administer what can’t always be achieved on our own two feet-a better vantage point.