Unresolved

As is often the case on the front side of a new year, I wax toward standard fare, hyperbolic unfounded optimism, “…ripe with hope and promise…” and all of that fantastic drivel, right?  If you’ve read previous January posts of mine, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  That bewildering excitement has too often been chased by an even more nonsensical series of impossible New Years Resolutions.  Mercifully, I have rarely spoken these assurances aloud so they remain off the record.  Rest assured that they have nearly always failed.  That is the inherent danger in making a resolution and why they are pointless – especially if said proclamation occurs in a public forum – there really is no good that can come of it.  Resolutions set us all up for predictable failure.  So far I’ve successfully managed to resist the pedestrian impulse to make any such declaration, and I feel better for it.  I’ve even resisted writing this until right now; an heroic accomplishment in of itself!

In the interest of full disclosure however, this New Year veracity is no different than any other.  I remain consumed with equivalent wide-eyed optimism.  I continue to be overwhelmed with the triumphant prospect of starting over, doing this one better than the last – who doesn’t want a mulligan sometimes, right?  The difference, if there is one this time, is that this year there is a centering calmness embedded beneath the surface of my bold anticipation that I can’t seem to shake or explain to myself.  I’m starting to realize that this resolution not to resolve if you will, has little, in fact nothing to do with the flipping of a calendar page.  It’s what I feel every second of every day of every week of every year.

There is an unspoken known, inextricably tattooed on the collective DNA of western culture – we quite literally want the world, and we want it now.  Americans especially simply will not tolerate or accept deferred gratification and this is why I think most resolutions fail.  None of which is to say that one shouldn’t strive to do or get or be resolved to whatever it is that turns their gear, I’m simply saying that one’s resolve shouldn’t coincide with the start or end of any human record or collection of occasion and damn sure shouldn’t be allowed to fade as time tick tocks away. 

Through exhaustive research, (that I’ve clearly fabricated within the confines of my singular runaway subconscious) I’ve determined that this is exactly why New Years resolutions too often fail.  Immediate gratification is the only course we know: it’s not even necessarily our fault at this point, it just is what is.  1 January you might say something like, I’m going to lose fifty pounds this year! 8 January: I’ve lost four pounds, go me!  15 January, you’ve gained two pounds back and by lunch on the 16^th, you say Fuck it, I want a cheeseburger.  End of resolution.  It’s the American way. 

A resolution of nearly any variety is often too abstract and/or too lofty a goal to attain overnight.  It’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon, right?  Hell, it’s not even a race – life isn’t a race!  My old man used to tell me that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  I’ve admittedly been blinded by my resistance to the obvious religious connotation of that statement since its first utterance, but I’ve started to understand it in my own way.  It’s not what you say, it’s what you do.  It’s not what you want to be, it’s what you are.  It’s not what you wish for, it’s what you have.  It’s not who, when, why, where or whatever else, it’s what are you doing to change it?  That’s a helluva lesson Pop, and it’s likely not at all what you were trying to teach me, but I dig it.

Allow me to digress.  At this very moment, there are north of 3.9 million job openings in this country and they range in skill-sets from garbage collection to CEO.  And yet, December’s employment absorption numbers were barely 490,000.  Why?  Of course, if you are unemployed, you are likely more suited to something above the station of garbage collector and of course, you are likely not qualified to be CEO but somewhere in the middle might fit, eh?  Maybe you are, as unfortunate as it is, forced to start climbing from a rung lower on the ladder than your expectations insist.  But to get to where you rightfully belong it should be a minor inconvenience.  Life’s not a race, but we do need to start running just the same.  If we could fill those 3.9 million jobs tomorrow, there would still be nearly 7 million American citizens without work and that sucks.  But can you imagine the collective sigh of relief this country would take if we graduated nearly 60% of those on the public dole to gainful employment?  It wouldn’t solve the problem, but it would be a meaningful, if not epic first step.  I’m not sure why I felt compelled to frame my argument through the tragic metaphor of unemployment, but I just did.  So there’s that.

The point remains intact though.  If it’s still not clear, here it is in black in white: incrementally improving your life every day is the only way to improve your life.  The only person that needs to know anything of it is you.  Every single virgin grain of sand that passes through the skinny bit of hourglass is a novel opportunity, a second chance to make it right, whatever that might mean to you.  I resolve every morning to be a better whatever than I was the day before; a better person, a better artist, a better son, a better friend, to be more compassionate, to think more often and deeper, to read, to make, to be.  I rarely succeed at any of those aspirations and that’s perfectly acceptable.  I’m still too quick to judge and dismiss, I say the wrong thing at the wrong time, I make mistakes, I fall down.  But I pick myself up and dust off.  I make amends if to no one other than myself.  I make peace and move on wrapped in the swaddle of this one unavoidable fact – the story is never told until worms crawl into my eye sockets and suck out what’s left of my brain and not even then if I’ve lived a full life.

Every sunrise brings the promise of a new and better whatever it is we want but only if we recognize and accept the gradational victories of our every day, only if we can comfortably reside in the uncomfortable interstitial space between yesterday and tomorrow.  Don’t for a second think that my long view isn’t as center stage and as powerful, if not more so than it has ever been.  It’s not that my expectations or goals have diminished – if anything they have been amplified.  I’m still intent on making 2014 my bitch just like I was 2013 and every other year prior (and every year after).  I am though more focused on the day-to-day, minute-to-minute aspects of that master plan.  It’s easier and more productive to spotlight my energy on making Friday better than Thursday than it is to obsess about my demeanor upon being finally recognized as the “coolest mother*&$#!@ alive.”  Life is not a race.

I’m as unresolved as ever and that is exactly as it should be.