On Second Thought

This is what I was thinking nearly a year ago.

I’ve made my one resolution for 2022. I will have no resolutions. What’s the point? I’m just going to break them in one week or one month or somewhere around May when it begins to get L.A. weather lovely, and I just want to throw off all the burdens of winter and our crazy version of Spring and frolic on the beach and in the Pacific Ocean (I’m lying, I haven’t been to the beach in years except to look out over the sand and water). Resolutions are defined as “a firm decision to do or not do something.”

Okay, so I did come up with one, lose weight—the perennial favorite of tens of millions of Americans. However, I’ve decided not to count that one because I’m either going to do it or not do it, and why would I place myself in a situation where I will have to feel guilty later on about not keeping the resolution to lose weight. I could just resolve not to lose weight. Then, if I lose the weight, I will have broken my resolution, but I won’t feel bad because I lost the weight.

Maybe, that’s the trick. Resolve not to do anything, and then if you break your resolution and it’s about something positive, you won’t feel bad about it. You’ll have reached a goal through the back door, and all you did was break a meaningless promise to yourself. It’s a win-lose situation but at least win is in the equation.

You’ve heard the old saying about don’t make any promises you can’t keep, right? Well, that’s applicable here. At this time of the year, we make this long list of promises/resolutions about the future with never fully grasping the level of difficulty inherent in keeping those promises.

Hell, we could get sick with COVID-19 the day after we made the promise and be dead in a week afterward. Or we could find ourselves invited to a sibling’s or best friend’s wedding and realizing that they’re serving food that you love and you just can’t help yourself. The smell of pernil and Arroz con gandules overwhelms you, and you eat until it hurts, and they have to carry you out of the wedding reception on a stretcher because you just didn’t have enough willpower to stick to your resolution to lose fifty pounds before your next birthday. Now, you’ve probably gained ten pounds (fifteen if you count the wedding cake and the other desserts that you stuffed down your greedy little mouth).

Yeah, none of this is good for you. You make resolutions, promise that you’re going to stop cursing at home and in public (M.F. has become my favorite word of all time, and I know it’s ugly, but it just slips out unconsciously). I know that on April 21, 2022, at approximately 7:30 p.m. I’m going to get pissed off at some news item on CNN or MSNBC, or some fool is going to make some stupid comment on my newsfeed about you know who and I’m going to M.F. them and the television set (Boy, am I old) and then I’ll feel (a little) guilty afterward, and I will swear to my dead mother and father that I will never use that filthy word ever again. I swear I’ll do that.

I’m lying. So why even go through the charade of making resolutions or promises only to end up repeating the resolution or promise after feeling like shit (another word I need to get rid of), and what does it get me? No, it’s just more inner conflict, and I’ll have to explain to my therapist that I once again broke a promise that I knew I couldn’t or wouldn’t keep.

Isn’t that the root of the issue? It’s not just that we couldn’t keep it; we never really wanted to do it in the first place. We just went through the process because, well, that’s what we’ve been trained by tradition to do, make resolutions that we know in our hearts and mind, we’re never going to keep. It’s sort of like a game of cards played with a cheat. You know they’re a cheat. They know you know they’re a cheat. But you still play the game, knowing how it’s going to turn out, but in the back of your mind, you think you’re smarter than them and that you are under the delusion that you could still win even when you know the truth. Wait what? That doesn’t even make sense.

But we still do it because we’ve fooled ourselves. Once again. We go through life having unrealistic expectations of ourselves instead of taking a moment to take stock of where we are in that moment and decided yes, I can do that or no, I can’t do that. And if I can’t, then deciding okay, what do I have to do to get where I want to go or what do I have to learn to do what I would like to do.

Look, I’ve always wanted to climb Mount Everest, but I know that isn’t going to happen at my age unless I do a whole series of tasks that I just don’t have time for, like you know, losing weight and maybe starting with a smaller mountain or hill before I decide to leap to the top of the world.

Now, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t dream big or make resolutions or promises to ourselves or others. It just means that before you go climbing to the top of the world, you take a realistic moment and figure out what will it take to get there. It’s just about maybe taking a few mountain climbing lessons. It’s about looking at your body and mind and asking yourself if you have the ganas, the balls (metaphorically speaking) to do what is necessary to do it.

That’s why before you go all out and make that long list of resolutions to do this and to do that, you check yourself first. Do you have the ganas, the inner strength, and determination to make it happen? If you answer truthfully yes, then go for it. If you answer no, decide if you got the ganas to find yourself some ganas. Because life is always full of opportunities where ganas are necessary to make it through the day and life.

Good Ganas hunting and a Happy New Year.