New Year's is not one of
those things I go out of my way to celebrate. Certainly not in any
currently traditional manner.
When I was young, I was
told Christmas was for kids and New Year's Eve was for adults. Naturally, as I grew older and became what is legally
an adult, I had a yen to join in those festivities and pretty much
make a blithering idiot of myself. As it turned, most of those around
me didn't notice the Idiot of Ed since they were, a) passed out, b)
incapable of actually focusing on what I was doing to become an
idiot, c) in the midst of becoming idiots themselves or, d) partaking
in “b” and “c” until “a” occurred in an incoherent,
steaming heap on a shag rug or tiled bathroom floor.
At the time, I felt I was behaving adulty... until the next day when I couldn't see well enough through my self imposed mental haze to find a coffee cup.
Naturally, as New Years
Day came and went in some form of catatonic haze of headache, barely
edible food, hair of the dog spiked orange juice and college bowl
football digested through blurred vision, most resolutions I had made
mere hours before were set aside for “tomorrow”. Tomorrow never
comes, as the idiom so aptly applies to incomprehensible, drunken promises slurred through blurred synapses.
Later in life, the
throngs of semi-coherent gyrating New Year's Eve revellers became
less and less enticing and, as I glance in the rear-view, far less
important to brag about. Resolutions soon became less important as
well. Those things I would promise myself on New Year's Eve while
partaking in some form of alcohol imbued mental promiscuity seldom came to
any lasting fruition.
I, like many others,
would resolve to change those things I deemed less than adequate
about my behaviour, my character or my lifestyle. It wasn't until my
late thirties when I realised there was nothing wrong with any of
those things so long as my actions weren't harming anyone else. If
they were harming me, it was a choice... hopefully made consciously.
That in no way implies
I didn't wish to become better or more than I was. It simply means that
“better” is a bit of an ambiguous target from the outset.
So, my resolutions
became more and more about a state of mind. That is, how did I wish
to feel rather than what I wanted or wanted to change. The truth is,
if there were something which I wished to change that was important
enough to me, (drinking, smoking, eating healthy food, driving
slower, using less, recycling more, exercise, etc), I would have done
it already. A fictitious line in the sand has little meaning or
motivation.
If I say I want to
change something or set a goal for something else, I will only
achieve it when it becomes important enough to me to motivate change.
It has become far more
important to me to focus on achieving a feeling rather than focusing on a thing
or change in behaviour.
Of course, there are
times when I miss knowing how many pieces of gum were stuck to the
under side of the tables at my favourite watering hole. That, though,
is a story for another day.