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COMMENTARY
January 3, 2009
Self improvements
The resolutions you can still remember on Jan. 3 are the ones you should probably have left off the list. They are the droning resolutions, the tedious resolutions, the mean stoical scraping resolutions that everyone makes, in moments of unseriousness: lose weight, give up smoking, spend less, drink no tequila.What is the point of such resolutions? They only make us miserable and neurotic. There is enough misery and neurosis to go round. Nine cases in 10 you will fail anyway. Or if there was more than one such item on your list: 10 cases in 10. I refer specifically to resolutions of the class, "I will stop doing this." It doesn't really matter what the resolution is, it won't work. Example: I used to try to give up smoking. Sometimes it lasted through several excruciating days. But in one case I held out seven months (during which I behaved like a psychopath). Now, that resolution entirely collapsed one memorable evening, when I decided to have just one cigarette. It was immediately replaced by another resolution, the next morning. Summoning the fury of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind ("As God is my witness ... I'll never be hungry again"), I resolved never, ever, to quit smoking again. But just a few weeks later, I was back at it: stubbing out like the protagonist in Italo Svevo's Confessions of Zeno. (A magnificent comic novel; make a resolution to read it.) So far as I am able to discern, there are only two kinds of strong-willed people: saints and psychopaths. According to the ancient understanding, the former have made a pact with God, the latter with the Devil. The modern understanding is, nature and/or nurture on both sides. As ever, the ancient understanding is correct. The great majority of people avoid making pacts with superhuman agencies, however, and in this group belong most who fail to stop whatever -- or even cut down a bit. We have, almost every time, failed to consider the magnitude of our resolutions. Had we confronted, prudentially, everything that would be involved in the abandonment of some supposedly bad habit, we would not have made resolutions so casually. Instead, we would have sought the assistance of some superhuman agency. Perhaps, for the sake of scientific comprehensiveness, I should mention the gap in resolution achievement between men and women. For when it comes to quantifiable achievements of the human will -- someone should test this, I'm sure that I'm right -- the women are far ahead of the men. (I have known some to actually shed weight.) The reason for this is perfectly obvious: men are more optimistic than women. Conversely, women are more realistic than men. They also have longer memories: one of the chief causes of unhappiness in both women and elephants. (On the other hand, this contributes in both to greater life expectancy.) So men, in particular, should not bother with standard New Year's resolutions. Women never listen to me, so I won't even bother giving them advice. I will instead argue that the whole contemporary notion of resolution-making is wrong. It is absurdly focused upon negatives -- and those of a trivial material kind. It is a superficial notion that lacks the dignity of the Lenten or Teshuvah or Ramadan fasts, which are for a fixed period, and for a better purpose. Fasting is good, seasonal fasting is better, and fast alternating with feast, in obedience to divine command -- is just about as good as it gets. Vanity is attacked by such practices, rather than encouraged; and the self-improvement that comes from strict observance is itself incidental to the performance of a duty. But there are resolutions for self-improvement that are both achievable, and to the good, for they require not the abandonment of old habits in a void, but the creation of new and positive habits. These are moreover not generic, but personal. Examples: I will take up drawing; I will master the flute; I will read Shakespeare; I will listen to Bach; I will keep a commonplace book; I will learn to cook; I will learn to dance; I will take my children on picnics; I will write love letters to my wife; I will give money in secret; I will volunteer at a hospital; I will visit at a prison; I will go to church every Sunday. One last crucial point: do not take courses, at least to begin. For the idea is to apprentice, to some glimpsed glory. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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