Resolve If You Want To

 

Hi there! Here’s my post from last New Year’s. I still don’t make resolutions for the same reason I’ve never made resolutions: I can’t stand letting myself down. That being said, I’ve been making small, beneficial changes. These decisions seemed to have been spurred on by my aging. I feel fantastic, healthy, and positive. I also feel every building block in my body shifting and changing. If you’re lucky enough to live this long, that life!

I’ve recently made three small changes to my health and hygene routine.

A Tasty Calcium Supplement

I used to try  (usually unsuccessfully) to take these calcium tablets, 600 mg horse pills. Taking a whole one bothered my stomach and I don’t even think I could absorb that amount of calcium all at once. So I cut the monsterous tablets in half which created jagged edges that sliced my esophagus as the tablet slowly clawed its way down my throat like an angry cat. To avoid this, I stopped taking a calcium supplement altogether. At my age, not awesome.

Recently, I treated myself to fruit-flavoured calcium gummies. It’s been a small, pleasant change I wish I’d made years ago!

Apple Cider Vinegar

All the health gurus swear by apple cider vinegar so I’ve been adding two tablespoons of it to my diet ginger ale. I like it! And it may just be a placebo effect, but my fat little belly seems to have shrunk a little since I adopted this habit. Another simple change that seems to have had a positive result.

Oral–B CrossAction Battery Toothbrush

This is another positive habit I’ve been meaning to re-adopt for years. I used to brush with a battery-operated brush, but they are more expensive and require more maintenance. But then two days ago, I resurrected one I still had kicking around from before. I cleaned in up and replaced the battery. Holy crow! My back teeth haven’t felt this clean in a long time. I’m so glad I finally made this small change I’d been thinking of forever.

Flannery O’Connor

Flannery O’Connor’s an author I’ve wanted to read for years and so this morning I ordered a copy of her short story collection A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955). I read a bit about her, too, as I searched for her works. She was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1925. I’ve actually seen her childhood home there. In her late 20s, she became ill with a disease closely related to the one that eventually killed my mom. Flannery O’Connor lived with this form of lupus for twelve years and died in 1964 at 39 years old.

Again, this change isn’t a resolution and it doesn’t require much self-discipline. Nor does it require any suffering. It’s just a gift I want to give myself in 2020. Are there any small changes you’d like to make as a gift to yourself this new year?

I don’t bother with New Year’s resolutions. There are so many wonderful and varied ways to set myself up for failure that I don’t need to add New Year’s resolutions to the pile.

Perhaps some of you have benefited from New Year’s resolutions. Maybe these made-to-self promises have allowed you to set and achieve goals that were otherwise out of reach. I haven’t met many people for whom resolutions have worked. Instead, I’m acquainted with the circle of folks who are kicking themselves because they couldn’t adhere to the resolutions they’d made. These are the people I know and to whom I can best relate.

Listen to me read this post:

The disillusioned and disappointed are familiar to me. Those who vowed to lose ten pounds and gained five, those who use our exercise equipment as a place to hang and dry laundry, those who stopped drinking after midnight on January first and got back on that old alcohol horse around seven p.m. on January third. These are the people I understand.

Not that I’m in any way against you who succeed in making and sticking to New Year’s resolutions. I’m not against you or elves or the Easter Bunny. I’m sure if I met any of you, we’d get along just fine. So far, though, I haven’t had the opportunity to meet any of these.

To resolve means to decide firmly on a course of action. This is just dandy except that factors all around us and that affect us are in a constant state of flux. Nothing stays the same, and there’s a whole ton of things we can’t control or predict that can alter our direction. We can decide as firmly as we like on a course of action, but we can’t control the wind or the waves. We can’t control the rain or the lightning. We can’t control when illnesses and accidents will knock on our doors.

To resolve also means to fix or to find a solution to a problem. But as human beings, we aren’t problems to be fixed or solved; we are meant to be. That’s the point of our existence, and not some imagined and ethereal state of perfection. We are meant to live, to experience, and to discover. We are meant to change, to learn, and to grow.

Sure, we can head in a direction, plot a course. Sometimes we’ll get to our destination and sometimes we’ll thank our lucky stars that we didn’t end up where we were headed. Sometimes our road will be paved, and other times it’ll be rocky and rough. Sometimes the road will seem impassable and still other times we’ll wonder where the road went. “It was here a minute ago…”

Don’t let me stop you. If making a New Year’s resolution motivates you or lifts your spirits or gives you a little something to look forward to, then go ahead.

But before you make a promise to yourself, promise me that you’ll forgive yourself when the winds of change shift your direction and when the road becomes impassable. Promise me that you’ll remember your ever-changing nature, and that you’ll try to accept your humanness. Tell me that you won’t let today’s fresh opportunity pass you by because of some rusty old resolution.

Resolve if you want to, but before you resolve to improve, consider that maybe you are just fine the way you are.

Did you like what you read and heard here? Consider following this blog through your email account or right here on WordPress. Thanks for spending some time with me. Wishing you all good things to come in 2020! ~ Lori

I think I could safely resolve to listen to more Jimmy Buffett this year . . .