Martha Miller and Bette Davis

New Year’s Resolutions

If you look on the magazine stands this time of year every cover will have a new diet. Americans believe in New Year’s Resolutions. We were raised on them. Live it up over the holidays and suffer as long as you can stand it in January. The trouble with that thinking is what I call "the pendulum affect." In other words, if I feel deprived long enough, the pendulum will swing the opposite way and my behavior will be worse than ever. Any changes I make have to be lifestyle changes. And if I take something bad away, I need to replace it with something good because nature abhors a vacuum. For example, one year I tried to quit cussing, and I went from one pack of cigarettes a day to one and a half packs a day. Then I got bronchitis and couldn’t get rid of it, and I had to quit smoking. Suddenly all I could think of were cuss words! Besides, as I get older I have come to realize that beyond health, weight just doesn’t matter and beyond the presence of my mother, neither does cussing.

So what are the really important things? What things would I like to change? Last night girlfriend and I saw Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore’s documentary) and today I would like to stop being afraid. I don’t mean afraid-of-the-dark type fear. I mean I would like to stop worrying about my children and just love them. I would like to stop worrying about tomorrow and enjoy today. Moore’s point was that America is a fear-based society. Other countries love violent films, handguns, and poverty. But America outnumbers every country in the number of shootings every year.

Once at a writers’ conference the author Ray Bradbury told several hundred aspiring writers to stop watching the evening news and to read. Michael Moore made the point that other countries have media, but it doesn’t affect their people in the same way. Bradbury suggested we read a poem every night before we go to sleep to get our brains working differently. I put Leaves of Grass on my nightstand. It’s still there covered with dust. But this is the year. I want my brain to work differently. I want to stop caring what’s on the evening news and get focused on my own little corner of the world. I want to eat a chocolate doughnut and not worry about how my jeans fit. I want to read more fiction and throw out all my self-help books. I want to stop working so damn hard and trust that some things will take care of themselves.

We learn lessons from everyone who touches our lives. Girlfriend taught me about money and how emotional poverty was related to fear. She taught me that there is fluidness to money. So I sponsor a little girl in Santa Domingo through Children International, and the letters she writes to me are treasures. My children are grown, but I love buying toys for Christmas, so I give some to "Toys for Tots." I don’t have a lot of money, but when I do those things I feel rich. And how I feel about prosperity is what counts. I suppose there are people with a lot more money who don’t feel as wealthy as I do.

Anyway, I’d like to take that faith (which is the opposite of fear) into the rest of my existence somehow. What would it be like to stop worrying and just enjoy my life? I know it takes about 21 days to form a new habit. So for 21 days I am going to just enjoy life. I am going to cultivate gratitude for my job and the people in my life. I am going to say "damn it" in front of my mother and let her deal with it. I am going to breathe the air and look at the clouds and laugh more often and watch T.V. less. It will be hard work, but that is my New Year’s Resolution.