Resolutions

The evidence is there and it's not good. Most people break their New Year's resolutions. On average, people hold out 'til January 19, apparently although about 8% of people manage to abide by their self imposed strictures for a year or more.

We make New Year's resolutions because there's bits of us we don't like and because we fall for one of the most common misperceptions that people have about themselves: that our failings are just a matter of will power and that if only we had a bit of discipline we could all smarten our individual and corporate acts up. Bah humbug, I say.

There's a French saying, tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. To understand all is to forgive all.

This is profoundly true. Pretty much everything we do, we do for a reason. What trips us up is that a) our reasoning is faulty, based as it is on inaccurate premises and incomplete information and b) our reasoning is usually completely invisible to us. So we notice that we ingest too many calories; or smoke too many roaches; or watch too much porn; or snap too easily at our children; and don't like the fact that we do so. So we gird up our loins and tell ourselves "only 1 gin a day!" or "I will take a deep breath and count to 10 before I blow my stack!" which we manage to do, on average until January 19th. And then we are back to our old behaviours, but with the added burden of self repugnance at our own weakness.

Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner.

What's required is the step most of us don't take because it doesn't occur to us to take it: to ask "Why?" Why do I do these things? This is a line of reasoning which is easy to say, and hard to follow through on because it is slow, and because we are - all of us - so adept at lying to ourselves, and because the solutions offered involve us in real, deep change rather than the quick and easy fix of a New Year's resolution.

Do I want to change? Am I willing to allow the one who is drawing me out of nothingness to change me? Intention and consent are the two basic attitudes of all spiritual practice. Perhaps allowing these two a place in our souls will do more to make us the people we wish ourselves to be than a long list of hopeful, but hopeless resolutions.

Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. The best place to start with our understanding, and therefore with our forgiveness, is with ourselves.

Comments

Barbara withington said…

So well said as always Kelvin. Did not make any resolutions this year. Decidrd life is for getting out there and living not worrying.

2 January 2021 at 08:04

Judy R-S said…

Judy R-S
Thanks Kelvin.
And something for you which I think is terrific
Https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2856-Mary-s-song
X

5 January 2021 at 10:02

John Roc said…

This is awesome!! I’ve always enjoyed reading your blog.

Genuine Jeep Parts Australia
Jeep Parts Queensland

1 July 2022 at 17:38

The Matter With Things. 2

Last night I finished reading Iain McGilchrist's The Matter With Things, Our Brains, our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World , the biggest book I have ever read, in all senses of the word "biggest". Back in 2017 I wrote about books which had been important to me , and, however I would recompile that list now, The Matter With Things would go straight to the top. Really. It's that good. I've read every word: no skipping or coming to and realising that my eyes have been glazed over for the past ten minutes. It's taken me a couple of months to engage with its 1300 or so pages of text, and, as well, there are another couple of hundred pages of appendices and bibliography (well, OK, I haven't read the bibliography). At the end of the book proper there is an epilogue which is a "so what" chapter in which McGilchrist speculates about the implications of his hemispheric theory for the world in the immediate future. This epilogue is preceded by a

En Hakkore

In the hills up behind Ranfurly there used to be a town, Hamilton, which at one stage was home to 5,000 people. All that remains of it now is a graveyard, fenced off and baking in the lonely brown hills. Near it, in the 1930s a large Sanitorium was built for the treatment of tuberculosis and other respiratory ailments. It was a substantial complex of buildings with wards, a nurses hostel, impressive houses for the manager and superintendent and all the utility buildings needed for such a large operation. The treatment offered consisted of isolation, views and weather. Patients were exposed to the air, the tons of it which whistled past, often at great speed, the warmth of the sun and the cold. They were housed in small cubicles opening onto huge glassed verandas where they cooked in the summer and froze in the winter and often, what with the wholesome food and the exercise, got better. When advances in antibiotics rendered the Sanitorium obsolete it was turned into a Borstal and the

Camino, by David Whyte

This poem captures it perfectly Camino. The way forward, the way between things, the way already walked before you, the path disappearing and re-appearing even as the ground gave way beneath you, the grief apparent only in the moment of forgetting, then the river, the mountain, the lifting song of the Sky Lark inviting you over the rain filled pass when your legs had given up, and after, it would be dusk and the half-lit villages in evening light; other people's homes glimpsed through lighted windows and inside, other people's lives; your own home you had left crowding your memory as you looked to see a child playing or a mother moving from one side of a room to another, your eyes wet with the keen cold wind of Navarre. But your loss brought you here to walk under one name and one name only, and to find the guise under which all loss can live; remember you were given that name every day along the way, remember you were greeted as such, and you neede

Turn Sideways Into The Light

David Whyte speaks in his audio series What To Remember When Waking of the myth of the Tuatha De Danann. They were a mythical race from Ireland's past who were tall, magical, mystical people devoted to beauty and artistry. When another more brutal people, the Milesians invaded Ireland the Tuatha De Danann fought them off in two battles, but were faced with a third, decisive battle against overwhelming odds. So, lined up in battle formation and facing almost certain defeat, the Tuatha De Danann turned sideways into the light and disappeared. Whyte's retelling is, to put it mildly, a gloss, but I am quite taken with the phrase and with the phenomenon it describes. Turning sideways into the light is the realisation that there are some encounters that are damaging to all involved in them: no one wins a war. Faced with such an exchange, to turn sideways into the light is to seek another, more whole form of relationship. It is to reject the ground rules of the conversation as they

Invisible

I arrive at the door, wondering if I have to pay admittance. I've never been an event photographer before and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. The young woman at the desk looks up and smiles. "Oh, we've been expecting you. Come in " she says. She stands and I follow her into the foyer where the show is set up. I put my large camera bag on a table and glance around. There are children everywhere, and someone in a rainbow costume is singing and playing her violin, and radiating seemingly inexhaustible energy from the small stage at the front. "Rainbow Rosalind" says my host. "She's fabulous, isn't she?" "Yeah. Great." Who could argue? Who would want to? She's fabulous. "Is there anything I can get you?" she asks. "Coffee? Tea? The friands are actually very good. " "Ahh, no... I'm all good thanks. I'll just get on with it. OK if I put my stuff here?" She smiles and goes back to

Available Light

Search This Blog