Resolutions

New Year's Resolutions intrigue me.  Not because I like making them, and not because they produce any lasting change.

Here's my theory: people always have time for what they truly value.  If you truly love reading, you will find time to read.  If you truly value baking, then you will find time to bake (I don't, so I won't).  I've found that even the busiest of people have time for their special pleasure. 

When someone says, "I would really like to do x, but I just don't have time for it," then I know that they don't really want to do it.  They just want me to think they want to do it.

Recently someone saw me reading a book and said, "You're so lucky that you have time to read. I just don't have that kind of time."  It's true that I am blessed with large amounts of time right now (although now that Kekoa is more distractible while eating, I find that time slipping away!).  But this same person is nearly constantly posting on Facebook.  Surely 15 of those minutes could have been used on a book?  -unless of course, she didn't actually want to read a book, but felt that she needed to make an excuse. 

The same goes for New Year's Resolutions: they reveal what people think they should value.

For example: Joe says that his resolution is to lose weight and eat healthier.  That tells me that he thinks he should value his health.  But he doesn't actually value his health.  If he actually valued his health, then it wouldn't be a resolution so much as a way of life.  Our deepest priorities have a tendency of becoming a part of us - if you have to mechanically perform the motions, then you don't really care about it.  Self-discipline only takes you so far.

Do you want to make a resolution that will stick this year?  Your behavior will change when your beliefs and priorities do.  And it will have nothing to do with the new year. 
 
So anyway.  Resolutions are kind of treated as a joke in our culture.  But I find them far more telling.  They are the indicators of what our culture is and what we think we ought to be.

Perhaps more importantly, they indicate what we never will be.