The Resolution Revolution

Song of the Day: Canvas by Imogen Heap

I can't count how many times I've been here, making resolutions. I mean, yes, you could theoretically say: "But Tom, aren't you 24? So, haven't you been here 24 times?" However, given that I wasn't lucid enough in my early years to know the word "resolution," let alone what a resolution is or how to make one, it can be safe to say that the number is less than 24. At the same time, I spend so much of my time resolving that I can also safely say that the number is significantly higher than 24. Quite the conundrum.

Hence the inability to count how many times I've been here before.

Originally, I was going to do 2013 in review, but I think that would be a bad idea. I spent a lot of time last year being narrow-minded and judgmental. I was so busy looking down on society and on people around me in general that I forgot to do the one big thing that I had resolved to do last year - treat people with kindness and respect. So busy was I being hard on everyone else for their behavior that I forgot to keep my own behavior in mind. In a lot of ways, I fear I became the kind of person I have railed against in my last few posts. Although I never broke down and used the word "selfie" or "twerk" in everyday language, I still became pretty self-focused. So my first resolution has been on fighting the crap, not by being judgmental and crappy in return, but by being good, and generous, and giving. Fight the hate with love.

2013 was a frustrating year from all angles, I won't lie. Struggling with a government that won't govern, gun violence continuing, accepting the truth of climate change and yet doing very little to change our habits, society becoming so infantile and so willfully ignorant that we allow the atrocities that have been enacted against us by our own government and law enforcement to go on without calling for justice. I could go on, but I won't. I simply can't.

I want 2014 to be more focused on the positive. I want my 2014 to be more focused on the good in this world. 2013 was so driven by negativity - by glimpsing into the real world - that I think I triggered the anxiety and hypochondriasis that ruled my life for the majority of last year. In 2014 I need to think more about something that Mr. Rogers once said:

"I was spared from any great disasters when I was little, but there was plenty of news of them in newspapers and on the radio, and there were graphic images of them in newsreels. 

For me, as for all children, the world could have come to seem a scary place to live. But I felt secure with my parents, and they let me know that we were safely together whenever I showed concern about accounts of alarming events in the world. 

There was something else my mother did that I've always remembered: "Always look for the helpers," she'd tell me. "There's always someone who is trying to help." I did, and I came to see that the world is full of doctors and nurses, police and firemen, volunteers, neighbors and friends who are ready to jump in to help when things go wrong."

For a long time now, it has been very difficult for me to see the good. The light is harder to focus on when it's surrounded by so much darkness. But it is there; no matter how hard you might have to look, it is there. We, as a people and as a society, make it so easy to look at all of the terrible things that go on. It's always easier to say: "I had such a bad day" and pinpoint all the tiny things that went wrong, than it is to say: "I had such a great day" and pinpoint all the little things that went right. When we do that, the tiny good things seem so much huger because we're not used to the idea of focusing on the good and right. We, I, have forgotten to look for the helpers. And they're still there.

There's an important Bible verse here: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." -John 1:5

I know that the above is something I discussed last year, but it's every bit as important to me now as it was then. In fact, it's even more important now than it was then, because I wrote it and then promptly forgot it in returning to the bedlam of everyday life. Where in 2012 I was making a statement for a bunch of other people, today I write this as a statement for me to consider. In 2012 I didn't feel nearly as jaded as I came to feel at some point in 2013, and I'll tell you that being jaded all the time is exhausting. It's time to understand that I am a part of this world that I spend so much time bashing - not above it.

Perhaps 2013 was the way it was because of the disastrous holidays that kicked them off. The days surrounding Christmas and New Years were so full of very personal glimpses into how evil people can be - having to watch as people I came to care about as family were taken advantage of and treated with such selfishness and... well... evil - that it colored a lot of the times that followed. All of a sudden, everywhere I looked, the shadows were lengthening and strangers had only malice in their hearts.

Only now do I understand - a realistic look at humanity, free of naivete, is important. But a hard-hearted view of mankind leads to embitterment, miserliness, selfishness, anxiety and hypocrisy. I grew a hard heart, and I didn't even realize it was happening. On the outside I'm sure it looked to most like nothing had changed, but on the inside I was tearing myself apart. Our annual Christmas Eve viewing of Scrooge was never as poignant as it was this year.

For 2014, I don't make resolutions based solely on my personal goals and aspirations. Yes, I have a goal to get in even better shape, and I want to cook more, and I want to have Marcus finished and headed out to publishers by May. But I also want to make deeper changes that will better me as a person. I want the world to be a better place in 2014 - and that needs to start with me. I want to stop judging everyone else, and start loving again. I want to be a kinder, better and more generous person. I want to have the courage to do the things I've wanted to do for a long time regardless of the words of others or my own personal fears; things as simple and selfless as donating blood, and things as big and me-focused as getting published, or moving, or getting hired into the State. I want to find more time loving this world and the people in it, good, bad or otherwise.

In 2013, I rediscovered my relationship with God. I reaffirmed my faith, or maybe I truly affirmed my faith for the first time. In 2014, I want to continue to grow in my relationship with the Lord. I am going to be ordained as an elder at my church on January 12th, and from there I hope to be as good an elder as I can be - to be someone the community of Westminster can count on and turn to in the years to come.

This is my resolution revolution; not just one resolution, but many. Not just one hope, but many. 2014 is going to be a year of change and growth, I can feel it. And I must say, I'm pretty excited for what's to come.