Photo credit: Anne Taintor
You are at the end of 2019 and you never imagined that your life would be the way it is now. Things hurt, your eyesight is getting worse, and chances are there’s a mole somewhere that starting to look...suspicious. Welcome to older age. You made it. You’re finally the grown up you desperately wanted to be as a kid. Yay!
Chances are you scrolled past or read something today that reminded you of all the things that have happened this past year. Or, perhaps, you ran into a quote that referenced something about 2020 being “the” year for new beginnings, new hope, new shoes, and a million dollars. Suddenly you feel the pressure, as many of us do, to come up with resolutions for this new decade we are entering. If I were to create an ambitious list for myself it would include going to the dentist (hate dentists), having that mole checked, climbing my way up some ladder somewhere, fixing my life, working on my six pack abs, and finally watching the last couple seasons of The Walking Dead. It’s a hefty list, it’s not even day 1 of 2020, and I already feel defeated. I have a decent body but six pack abs after three kids? That’s a work in progress, people. Pardon my appearance during construction.
You and I live in an age of goal setting and vision boards. Our parents never did any of that crap. They existed with their Tang and Kool-Aid, rarely drank water, and smoked cigarettes in the kitchen, filling our lungs with the secondhand smoke that would lull us to sleep alongside the sound of their hushed gossip. They didn’t have a rectangular window in their hand that showed them what Suzy Soandso was up to in the next town over. They talked, rolled their eyes at others’ fortunes, and quietly prayed that they too would be so lucky someday. Then came along us Baby Boomers and Gen Xers with our insistence upon pursuing individual “happiness”. Before long, we had the Millennials showing up with vision boards and cute hashtags. A whole new Kool-Aid has been served and so many of us have drunk it without caution. There’s a resolution for that.
2020 seems like a bigger deal to me than the year 2000 did. Perhaps because I am far more sober than I was in 2000 or maybe I’m just older and less flexible than I was two decades ago. I am newly single so that might have something to do with the gravity I am feeling with this particular ball dropping. Yes, I know what Michael Scott would say right there. Whatever it is, I will tell you one thing that I reject in this decade—resolutions. In place of resolutions this year, I will list hesitations. I will hesitate, for example, to flip off assholes in Boston traffic. I will hesitate to hit send. I will hesitate to add a third teaspoon of sugar because my six pack abs aren’t going to appear without such restraint. I will hesitate to open my mouth before my foot is right in front of it, ready and willing to be inserted. Most importantly, I will hesitate to accept anything less than I deserve. With so much restraint in place, I am setting myself up for small victories everyday. So much better than setting myself up for failure. These victories will hopefully result in achieving the resolutions I have had for so many years. Perhaps my hesitation to make resolutions will be the very thing that helps me achieve them. Ah, the irony.
Tonight, I am alone in a tiny house up in New Hampshire. It is a great little find, one that I plan to come back to from time to time. I watched big chunks of ice drift down the Merrimack River today and fell asleep as afternoon turned to dusk. I am someone who loves a lot, cares too much, chews more than I should ever bite, and feels everything a touch too deeply. All that leads to brain overload, system shuts down, a reboot is needed. And although this reboot will end with the sunrise in the morning, I will have gained all the perspective I need for this new year and, on my drive home tomorrow, I will hesitate to extend my middle finger at any time. In a post-millennial era where “Just do it” has flooded our consciousness, hesitation is called for after decades of bravado. New slogan? Just give us a minute. We’re thinking.
Happy New Year all you beautiful people! May you hesitate more than your impulses want you to this year. And when your impulses lead you in the direction of your heart? Follow them. You only live once.