On New Year's Resolutions

I haven't blogged in a few days but that doesn't mean I haven't been productive.  I have been working on my goals for the next year, which some people call their New Year's Resolutions.  I myself don't call them my New Year's Resolutions because they never pan out when I do.

In fact, at a meeting of my friends I asked them if they would like to talk about our New Year's Resolutions the next time we met, but no one seemed especially thrilled.  They would rather have put it off until the new year, which I thought would be counterproductive as they are in fact for the new year.  But in any case, it made me think of the topic of New Year's Resolutions and why they are so daunting.

Being a writer and an ardent observer of language, I realize how important words are in classifying things.  It's the difference between saying something is cute or pretty, which both might mean attractive, but yet don't conjure up the same feelings.  I know, because I had "discussions" with people in college about which label was better, cute or pretty.  Boys said cute, girls said pretty.  It meant a lot to them to be right in their argument.  In any case, perhaps it is the wording of New Year's Resolutions that makes them so daunting and wearisome to think on.

The active term is "Resolution" after all.  And that is a big term, just in itself.  It has 10 letters and that's a lot.  I'm not being facetious either (another big word).  When faced with long words, we tend to tune out.  I say "we", because I tend to tune out, but I'll generalize my feelings to the whole of humankind for this post.

Especially problematic is when we aren't sure what the word means.  Resolution.  What does that mean?  It sounds so much like revolution.  But that's a different word, though not so different meaning.  They both suggest some sort of change.  Resolution, however, is the word and it has a few meanings.  It can mean that you resolve to do something, meaning you are determined upon doing it.  That sounds good.  Strong.  It can also mean that you have solved something, thus the root word "solution" in the term.  But both these ideas of being determined and solving something for the new year for some reason makes us cringe.  By all accounts, after all, the reputation of New Year's Resolutions is to make them and then break them.

Perhaps one reason is because, do we ever really think that we can ever completely solve whatever it is that is wrong with us in the new year?  Perhaps we could if we didn't use the word "new."  After all, the new year is only new so long and then it is just the year, or the current year.  Pretty much after January, the new year ceases to be new taking with it our resolutions with it.  

And perhaps, besides the daunting word choice, at the root of all this anxiety is that at the very essence, New Year's Resolutions have the idea of "should" behind them.  And as Jack Canfield reminded me, no one wants to do something they "should" do.  They want to do something they "want" to do, but if it is something they consider as a "should," they will inherently push against it.  That's how people are.  We hate direct orders.  Even if it comes from ourselves.  We won't listen, especially to ourselves because we know we lack the resolve (there you go) to punish ourselves if we break our promise to ourselves.

So here is my proposal:  we should (I know, the irony) stop saying "should," (like that song, "Never say never") and start saying we "should not" when it comes to New Year's Resolutions.  At least, when it comes to things we "should" do.  For those we shouldn't, a "should" would still work.  For example:

I should play video games all day long.
I should not go to sleep earlier.
I should not eat healthier.
I should not exercise once a day.
I should watch more TV.

There you go.  An opposite list, if you will, of non-solutions.  My New Year's Non-solutions.  Let's tell ourselves to do the opposite of what is good for us and see what we do.  It's an idea.  I can only think that whenever I see the words "should not," I think "Why not?"  Why not?  And it makes me at least think more favorably of whatever comes after those words, "should not".  Human nature is so very complex. 

In any case, for all my rambling, there will be no New Year's Resolutions for me, only goals for 2010.  For some reason, that sounds better.