Resolutions: Wishful Thinking?

I am sure that I have been making New Year Resolutions since I was about ten which probably means I have made at least fifty or more. I can’t remember a single one of them and I probably failed to meet any of them anyway.

New Year’s Resolutions are said to date back to Ancient Babylon. They also seem to have featured in Ancient Rome. Julius Caesar introduced a calendar in 46 B.C. which declared January 1st as the start of the new year. The date honoured Janus, a two-faced god, who symbolically looked back into the old year and forward into the new.

New Year’s Resolutions, as we would know them, appeared to be common by the 17th century. By 1802, the tradition of making (and failing to keep) them was common enough that people satirised the practice.

In 1813 an American newspaper featured the first recorded use of the phrase ‘New Year Resolution’:
“We believe there are multitudes who will sin all December, with a serious determination of beginning the New Year with resolutions with the full belief that they shall thus expiate and wipe away all their former faults.”

Of course, the history of making and breaking New Year’s resolutions continues to this day. Most of us will probably make one at New Year. Somehow the practice has become somewhat similar to making a wish as you blow out the candles on your birthday cake hoping, just hoping, that the wishes come true.

Words and ideas become institutionalised over time and can often move away from their original and real meaning if all be it by custom and practice. Take the word Resolution itself as defined in the Cambridge Dictionary:  the act of solving a problem or finding a way to improve a difficult situation.

That’s the last thing a wish is. We can wish to resolve all our dreams and wishes and all the problems in the world. But blowing out the candles won’t do it, neither will making a resolution on New Year’s Eve as the clocks tick around to twelve.

The real meaning of the word necessitates a plan as to how we get to the resolution. Resolution is surely a word that looks back on something that has been achieved. The suffix “re” ensures that. We can only get to a resolution if we know how to get there. And there’s the rub. We have no plans- just wishes.

The question that we perhaps should be asking is,” How I can be resolute?” Thus using a word firmly related to the semantic meaning of the word resolution itself. “What steps can I take to ensure that I reach where I want to go? How can I get to the resolution I wanted in the first place, way back on New Year’s Eve?

Take the tortoise in the Aesop’s Fable “The Tortoise and the Hare”. We all know the story. The hare taunts the tortoise whilst dashing and running and soon burning out. Meanwhile the tortoise has a plan and is resolute. I will be resolute in keeping to the plan. Slow and steady wins the race. We all need, perhaps, to have a plan that will take us to our resolution, whatever it may be and be a little more resolute in ensuring that we reach our goal. 

Resolutions apart, I'd like to share with you a poem that attempts to articulate wishes for our daughter as she leaves home to study abroad. I would suspect the feelings are universal. You want your offspring safely sprung, because they are not children anymore, far from it. Sometimes it is hard to grasp that. There will always be a part of you that sees them as tiny, fragile and innocent.

There, of course, is the rub. Nevertheless you know in your heart of hearts, they have grown, have become what kids these days, call “rock” and they will surely walk side by side with experience, sometimes for worse but mostly for better, as they become their own person. And it’s at that point they will send you the songs, the pictures, stories and poems to show they have caught the light in rainbow fashion...

Catch the Light in Rainbow Fashion

The autumn rain runs down the airport window
as we wait for the screen to show your flight.
The rain stops for a while, pooling on a ledge,
finding its own way down the pane.
Catching the light in rainbow fashion.

The flight is called and you stand to go.
You won’t look back as you walk through the gate.
It would be easier to pilot jet planes
than control emotions at this precise time.
So we’ve left a note in your backpack.

Sing us a song of what you hear.
Paint us a picture of what you see.
Tell us a story about what goes on.
Write a poem and send it home.
Catch the light in rainbow fashion.

Thanks for reading. And a week or so late, Happy Resolute New Year!

Bill Allison