4 december 2005 Archives

It occurs to me that as we approach the end of another year, news “features” will talk about New Years' Resolutions...person-on-the-street kind of stuff. Cloyingly stupid things that make all people seem shallow and, worse, all look the same.

Folks will diet and they'll join gyms and they'll promise to be nicer. But everyone wants to diet after the gorging of the holidays and it's Wintertime and it's awfully cold out and that sofa is awfully comfy—and hey, isn't the Holiday Season the Most Wonderful Time of the Year™ so didn't we just spend all of our own individual Niceness®?

Though I am not a fan of words themselves, I'm a big fan of using the right word—no matter how large or how little known—and right now, the word resolution is the one that I'm turning over and over in my head.

res•o•lu•tion |ˌrezəˈloō sh ən|
noun
1 a firm decision to do or not to do something : she kept her resolution not to see Anne any more | a New Year's resolution.
2 the action of solving a problem, dispute, or contentious matter : the peaceful resolution of all disputes | a successful resolution to the problem.
[...]
ORIGIN late Middle English: from Latin resolutio(n-), from resolvere ‘loosen, release’ (see resolve ).

The typical, tired “New Year's Resolutions” obviously fit into the first definition of the word. But what about the second definition?

We look to the New Year, to January 1st as a rebirth—we even have a Baby New Year. It's when we get to reset ourselves to the first day of the first month. A chance for a new beginning. And isn't that handy?

It's nice that we hand ourselves a fresh start. Truly. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for renewal and reinvention, remaking and restarting: I've certainly done it myself enough times.

But there's something we lose when we borrow what is essentially a social hack for a shot at too-easy rebirth. Look at the Born-Agains. Look at Jimmy Swaggart and Newt Gingrich. A contract made with a prostitute and a Contract With America made by a prostitute. No one earned the fresh start. We don't earn the fresh start a turnover on the chronometer promises.

What about that second definition above? Who takes the end of the year and makes it about resolving the problems that have happened over the past year? I'm not talking about closure. That's another word and one that lacks the vitality and the active voice needed for true resolution.

We might also think that the negative things that have happened to us are definitive and closed. Done. History. The problem with that is the chimeric nature of the Past: we suppose that it's immutable and we act as if it's immutable, even as the Past reconfigures and remaps itself to a different Reality, a different Truth almost daily.

Those two qualities of the Past form a set of race conditions where the future means less because we know that its permanence can always be changed to suit. Or if not changed, at least forgotten. It also diminishes the ongoing Present, spreading it out into the near Past and near Future until there is no longer the goad to decide because there's no longer a real here and real now.

Well, I'm going to try something different this year. As many of you know, this has not been a very good year for the Biscuit God, over all—and a few of you know exactly why it's been bad and in what ways.

History with the immutable (e.g., death) has taught me that rolling with the punches is the only way to keep on rolling sometimes. Sometimes. That's the key. Sometimes you have to punch back. Not out of bravura or machismo or in a tit-for-tat, but because it's the right thing, where I am defining “right” as that which helps to prevent a recurrence of the same bad stuff and seeks to create a space where good stuff can appear.

There have been bad guys. Some have made restitution or apology, but even that is not enough. Something else has to happen; I have to make something happen, to play the Trickster to my own life.

To that end, the right thing to do? Punishment.

Not revenge, mind you. Revenge is for children or the emotionally retarded (you know who you are). Punishment is education. Punishment is pain, or at least cost, but still it comes with a lesson. Without the lesson, it degenerates into offense or violence or, yes, revenge.

These are not threats, nor even promises. More like....predictions. “You Will Pay” is a prediction.

I intend to resolve those bad things which happened this year insofar as I am able, insofar as they are resolvable. The Known Year...the second definition...the people and the the situations. The Leader must learn he's not a leader at all, Alpha Dogs must grow spines. A Buddy isn't a buddy because a Rose actually never does go by any other name. Chances Aren't. usw...

All of it, all of them, under scrutiny in order to bring my own sunlight to my own well-earned January 1st.

And isn't that better than hitting some cosmic reset button for an annual freebie?

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