Monday Morning Mumbling
One small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day. That’s as true in 2023 as it was last year or the year before. Here’s the quote:
New Year’s Day—Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.
— Mark Twain
Now, at first blush, this may not seem like the most “positive” of quotes. It sure doesn’t bode well for any of us expecting to succeed on our New Year’s resolutions! But if we look just a bit closer, maybe this really is a positive thought. “Go in, community.” This is a harmless annual institution. And while the great wit only went as far as to call it “harmless,” I think in truth he might have admitted that it is even somewhat beneficial. Even if we end up paving hell with these resolutions next week, the truth still remains: we made them. We have those good intentions. We took the time to reflect on a year and think about what we want our lives to look like 365 days hence.
Will we swing and miss? Maybe sometimes. Maybe often. But taking the time to seek out a slightly better path will never be a mistake, or even just “harmless.”
In recent years I have tried to avoid making “New Years resolutions” in the strict sense, because I feel the way Twain did (without the brilliant sarcastic satire to express it). January eventually becomes February, and there is not (as far as I know) a New Years resolution tracker app for iphone, or a New Years resolution Check-In Day some time in July. We do, as a group, tend to leave these to the wastebasket of history.
Still, remember that the exercise itself is not without merit. Must you recite your resolutions on social media, or profess them to your family? Of course not. But I plan to take the time for some self-reflection and examination (and one of my unexpressed resolutions is to get more of the blog posts out of the “draft” folder and onto the site). Perhaps you will join me in thinking about how to make 2023 better for yourself and those around you.
Have a great week everybody.