The Cynic Express(ed) 1.12: New Year’s Self-Discipline
I don't make New Year's Resolutions. And this is not some smart aleck beginning for some cutesy piece about I resolve to never do it again. I don't care for resolutions, and I don't care for the thought that you can snap your life into two pieces and label them before December 31st, 11:59 p.m. and after January 1st, 12:00 a.m., and I don't care for the people who tend to promise themselves that they will do something better, stronger, faster, or less, or not at all based on the fact that it is a new year, as if all their vices and imperfections are reset to zero as the clock strikes.
When those mantras are uttered, sometimes in response to peer pressure and sometimes in sincere hope that a world will change around the mystic syllables, they mark a minor turning point in the life of the magician who spake thus. As the year progresses, the incantations--the simple acts of making the resolutions--fade, the maker relents, and whatever action was resolved out of existence recurs. I've done it, particularly with resolutions about not buying books until I read all the books I owned. But then something comes along, and, wham! There I was with a Barnes and Noble catalogue and no sponsor to call to talk me out of it.
Therein lies one of the problems with any of those zingy little one-liner promises we make to ourselves each year. Once broken, the contract is null and void. Once off the high ground of a new diet, wallow in gluttony and French Silk pies. And those people who break resolutions go on with their lives, feeling a little guilty but not enough to do anything more than ahng their heads, sigh, and promise themselves that on January 1st of next year, things will change, we swear!
Instead of the one-shot New Year's Resolution, I propose we all try a little New Year's Self-Discipline.
One of the draws of the resolution is that it promises everything will be different, now! Someone who makes it does not necessarily consider why he, she, or it does things that, upon further year-end analysis, he, she, or it would rather not. The underpinning causes. More importantly, the actual implementation of the resolutions. How will the resolution maker get there from here? The only thing he, she, or it sees is the here and the there.
Self-discipline accounts for these things. It includes a realization that change is a gradual process. Losing weight will not happen drastically without illness, mental problems, or liposuction. Quitting smoking does not take one from death-sucking sophisticate to self-righteous health crusader in a breath. Getting into shape does not go from the El Paso Nacho Nacho Man to Charles Atlas in seven days. Chest-thumping masculinity takes a scores of push-ups, a four-scores of sit-ups, running day after day, and maybe even a health club. Even with steroids. But self-discipline will get one from here to there eventually.
Self-discipline is not a contract, nor a promise. It is a process. Sometimes the ninety pound weakling will miss a day of lifting because he was out of town and away from his Nautilus. Sometimes Big Bertha will step off of her diet to accommodate her sister's special pie. Okay. But when Old Smokey slips off to have another cigarette, or O.G. I'mgonnareadmore, Jr., decides he'd rather play Tomb Raider II and ogle Lara Croft's pony tail bouncing, then the little man with the campaign hat will stand up, shouting, "You puke! Drop and give me one hundred!" and then hopefully Smokey or O.G. or whomever will get back with the program, and working toward his goal.
So when this New Year firecrackers into the foreground from the future and settles onto the calendar, instead of resolutions, we should try self-discipline. Between today and the future are many tomorrows, and making a little progress on each tomorrow will take us incrementally, but measurably, to better health, bigger vocabularies, or better relations with the in-laws.