RESOLVE WHAT?

I’ve been thinking a lot about resolutions. In particular I think about our annual ritual of welcoming a new year with a personal sacrifice of some sort. Isn’t it something…this New Year’s resolution (NYR) thing? I mean-shouldn’t the act of a New Year’s resolution be renamed “Procrastinator’s Resolution” or “I Need a lame Excuse Resolution” or something similarly appropriate? I have often wondered why the “Great American Smoke Out” was not positioned in the first week of January. Who wants to attempt to quit smoking if it's not part of a New Year’s resolution anyway? It’s an attempt doomed to fail because of that. It’s funny how some people feel relief that they never “officially” declared anything as part of their NYR; “off the hook”. I think there would be a greater amount of success if people just did away with this whole NYR kind of thinking and just did things because it is the right thing at the right time at whatever time it happens to be. I think if a person needs the silly hand-holding contentment of a NYR in order to commit to something they have already failed before they even start because the motive is all screwed up. One other observation-why is it acceptable that facing our addictions can wait until it is NYR time yet our attitudes or other behavior are expected to be corrected at any time of the year? I think we need to get out of this ridiculous habit of falling into a trap of failure set up as part of this New Years resolution nonsense. If you think about it-the whole notion of a New Year’s resolution is right on the order of child’s play and perhaps if we want success in changing some things that we find undesirable in ourselves we should just grow up and deal with our issues like adults and leave the New Years resolution baby-games to children.