Thoughts from beyond the pond.
Can we come to a Resolution?
February may seem a little too late to talk about New Year Resolutions, but if you have broken yours already, read on since we are kindred spirits. If you have kept your New Year Resolutions please read on and feel virtuous. Benjamin Disraeli’s eponymous hero Vivian Grey comments, after a particularly difficult time, “The genealogy of Experience is brief; for Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action.” This is a wonderful way of describing a New Year's Resolution i.e., you think of something that needs to change and then act on it. This is all well and good, I thought, as I walked with a couple of friends across the wooden bridge over the North Pond. For me, unfortunately, New Year Resolutions represent the pinnacle of failure! I have always made them. My parents started this habit and embedded it into my upbringing. Suggestions came thick and fast: keep your bedroom tidy; don’t annoy your brother; sit down and write thank you letters for all the beautiful presents you have received. At the age of six, I had an aunt who would send me socks each year and at that age, socks lacked the necessary level of excitement to make me want to write a thank you letter, however badly written under duress. Thus, from a young age, while I sat in a messy bedroom, clashing with my brother who was breaking all my pencils, I learned just what it was like to feel like a failure when it came to Resolutions. As I grew older, I began to develop resolutions which may have less chance of failure. One year, quite disastrously my resolution was to buy favour! Rather than use my dinner money, to buy a school dinner, I would buy sweets for the tuck shop so that I could bribe Susan Clark to do my Latin prep and James Golightly not to tell the PE teacher that my refusal to climb a rope was more to do with my lack of coordination, than my fear of heights. The failure was spectacular, Susan although a wonderful young woman, ate the sweets, but could not be bribed and the PE teacher was far more intelligent than he looked. Catastrophe on both counts. Later, I became determined to produce failproof resolutions. The easiest ones such: as eating every day; or being careful when crossing the road really fail in their own way. The OED defines good resolutions as “intentions that one formulates mentally for virtuous conduct”, thus I botched failproof resolutions. Eventually, I gave up and my final resolution was to never again make a New Year’s Resolution. It worked because that year I gave up smoking, which would never have happened if it had been a New Year’s Resolution. As we walked, I asked my friends whether they had made any resolutions this year. Both looked at me with scorn and said New Year Resolutions were a waste of time. I immediately felt a close bond and I congratulated them for their wisdom, and with that, we went to the pub. If I were to make a New Year resolution this year, it would be not to embellish the truth. I fear, as usual, I would have failed, but a Happy New Year to everyone and may each of us find new and pleasing opportunities this and every year.