This I Resolve

I am standing in the kitchen looking at my 2010 calendar.  I thumb through the pages.  The dates have been filled.  The events are past. In a few days, it will be a new year. 

I tack up a fresh calendar for 2011.  It’s clean and bare.  It represents a new beginning. As I prepare to ring in a new year, I stop for a few minutes to reflect on what has been and what is yet to come.

I’m not one for making resolutions.  My experience has been that more often than not, my resolve fades before President’s day.  So I shy away from the yearly tradition of jotting down ways to be better.  

Still, the chasteness of the new year beckons me with possibilities.  As I prepare to turn the pages on my new calendar, I can’t help but succumb to the allure that is offered by the clean slate.  A thought begins to form in my head.  I decide to pick one simple idea and to make it my pledge for the next 365 days. 

We are all imperfect beasts.  We fall. We falter.  We fail.  That’s way it’s easy to critique those around me.  That’s why it’s easy to recognize the foibles of others.  And I know that by focusing on the faults of my friends, I can easily avoid considering my own flaws. 

But criticizing others does not make improve me.  It does not uplift me.  It does not better my life or the world I live in.  My resolution for 2011, therefore, is simply this.  To concentrate on what I can do that is right instead of focusing on what others do that is wrong.

I pick up my pen and scratch a thought on January 1.  “Do good.”  This I resolve.