Old Years’ Resolutions

Old Years’ Resolutions    —by Jinny Batterson

For many years, I’ve avoided making discrete New Years’ resolutions. I have a tendency to backslide. Eliminating harsh words, taking off five pounds, following an exercise plan—most years such resolutions would get broken by late January if not sooner.  Instead, I’ve tried just setting general directions, somewhat more gently: I’ll bite my tongue a bit more often, eat a little less, exercise a tad more. I’m not sure if those around me even notice. Still, I reason, how can I expect to improve either myself or the world if I spend lots of my time blaming myself and/or making up excuses for broken promises?

Looking forward and setting goals are important, with New Year a frequent milestone for doing so. As I get older, occasionally looking backward seems appropriate, too.  What has gone well in the year just ending? What has gone poorly?

This past year has been good for me. I realized a long-term goal of publishing a travel memoir. I enjoyed generally good health. My husband and I shared several adventurous and rewarding trips. Meanwhile, the world at large has caromed along with perhaps more disasters and more vitriol than in some years. Headlines and blogosphere trend negative.

On the personal front, I think I’ve done a fair job at maintaining a civil tone in interactions with relatives, friends, acquaintances and elected officials across the political spectrum. However, I did send a somewhat snippy letter about varying leadership styles to our congregation’s new minister; I used some harsh words in a couple of the postcards I mailed to our current national leader. Weight control? Not so good—after a December trip that included lots of holiday feasting, any implicit goals about weight loss have fallen short.

What about exercise? There I think I’ve shone. Partway through 2018, after an extended hiking trip in rural France upped my average step count well above 10,000 steps per day, I set a short-term personal goal: Could I keep my annual average above 12,000 daily?  With just a few days to go, I’m tantalizingly close. Today the weather where I live has been pleasant, so getting in steps outdoors (roughly between four and five miles) was easy. Tomorrow and the next day are predicted to be rainy, making outdoor walks less appealing. New Year’s Eve may find me trudging on the treadmill at the gym, or pedaling the second-hand exercise bike at home, or even doing late-evening laps around our small condo as the TV counts down the final hours until midnight. If I’m able to meet this “old year’s resolution,” set not in January but in August, I’ll be pleased. The world at large may still be somewhat dicey, but I’m in better shape.   

Concentrating too hard on “new year” milestones may cause us to miss chances for learnings and goals later in the year or later in life. Looking back through much earlier personal journals, I found a year-end thought from 1982, a year in which unrest in Poland and the continuing cold war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union had been much in the news. The U.S. economy was in recession. Britain and Argentina had gone to war over the Falklands, a set of small islands in the South Atlantic. Nevertheless, I wrote then:  “All in all, 1982 has not been a bad year. The world is still teetering on the brink of disaster, as usual, but there’s been a lot of love and beauty, too.”   

May 2019 turn out to be a year in which many personal and broader issues move toward better resolutions, whether made early or later. Happy New Year!