A Happy Resolution
Therapeutic Journaling #5
I have never made a serious New Year's Resolution. Not even once. Mostly that’s because I never had the self-confidence to think I could flip a self-discipline switch and start a new era on the first day of the year. Or maybe I just knew it would be better to space unkeepable resolutions out across the year. In any event, I’ve decided to change my no-resolutions sentiment this year, because 2024 has been hard, one of the two hardest years of my adult life in some respects, and I feel motivated to do whatever I can to avoid a replay.
In terms of objective barriers to a good year, those “respects” include health issues, starting with removal of a real but not terribly threatening skin cancer, followed by a very serious gut cancer scare that after several tests and two terrifying weeks turned out to be nothing. On the heels of that came an injured back and hip that limited my activities seriously for two months, and still isn't back to normal. Then a bout of Covid, followed by a dislocated shoulder requiring ongoing physical therapy. And now, for the first time in my life I am conscious of feeling significantly older than I did 365 days ago.
But the objective barriers were exceeded in large margin by more subjective problems. My issues in this respect have been closely related to my emotional health, which is intrinsically correlated to the political situation. And in that context, the November victory of the rednecks, gangsters, plutocrats, and conspiracy theorists was a blow that resulted, first, in a few weeks of unfocused anger and despair, then numbness. Recently, however, I have definitively decided that I really need to get hold of my emotions and stop being so angry, suspicious, and depressed.
Just to clarify, political angst is not new to me. It's been going on for decades, and has been a constant companion since at least 2015. But following the election it reached a crescendo as I realized that the old order has ended, as surely as the Berlin Wall fell 35 years ago. And now, the best we can do is to moderate the wave of illiberalism that is sweeping across the globe, because in the short or even medium term there’s no going back to the institutionalized liberalism that constituted “normalcy” until the last few years … or even just the last few months.
But for me, and I think for most people who share my sensibility whether they're conscious of it or not, the anxiety and distress that has characterized this last year is not merely the threat and subsequent fact of political defeat. No, the problem is much broader and more disorienting than that. Because what we face now is a distorted reality, made unrecognizable as facts and truth increasingly become irrelevant to a majority of people. Integrity and kindness have become passé for half the nation, while the Liberal world order took a hard right turn toward a very bad ending much quicker than any of us anticipated.
Like most other people, I have watched in horror as the normative rules and attitudes in which we've spent our entire lives crumbled. The process happened slowly at first, then more rapidly, unfolding on Hemingway's famous articulation of how bankruptcy happens … “gradually, then suddenly.” And now here we are at a watershed moment of change that I believe is encompassing, irrevocable, and long-term. My take is that the new world, the new mythologies of what constitute civic virtues and the public good, will never be the same, and we can never go back to the world as it has been for the last 75 years. I distinctly do not like or approve of this new world, promoted and directed as it is by bellicose, greedy, grievance-filled buffoons. But alas, the world does not care what I think, and will not adjust to my preferences. So it's on me to adapt.
The structural guardrails and bureaucratic inertia of not just our government, but much of our society will resist rapid change. And using history as a guide, things probably won't be as radically bad as many of us fear. We'll soon see the first brash steps of the post-liberal order, and what that means to our individual and collective well-being. But nobody can know how the process will unfold. My own suspicion is that nightmare tragedies will dramatically impact some people and sectors, but that many people will not notice any real change in their lives.
I'm pretty optimistic that Mary and I will not be directly impacted, beyond being traumatized simply by watching videos and reading about horrible and in some cases brutal injustices. I'm certain it will be necessary for me to self-consciously dissociate from those events in order to maintain emotional health. That may be less difficult than it now seems, because it might be a reflexive, unthinking act of self-preservation. And I even leave open the possibility that a more authoritative government could result in needed reforms and developments that possibly be comprehended as silver linings … although at this moment I can't imagine what any hidden blessings or silver linings might look like. In any event, the onus is really on me to find a way to avoid getting too deeply mired in despair, and the best way I see to do that is to stay focused on my own personal development and to nurture my immediate social universe.
A real blessing in terms of launching this conquest of my own contentment index is that along with the bad, some very good things happened in 2024 that are still fresh in my mind. Mary and I are already actively planning for a good 2025, most notably with more travel. Our trip to Prague last March, for example, was outstanding, so enjoyable and so satisfying that we have already confirmed and mostly paid for a repeat of that trip to the same apartment in Žižkov on almost the same dates as last year. As well, my recent research trip to Guatemala in October/November was one of the best three week periods I've ever spent in The Land of eternal Spring … and there's every reason to hope that we can also repeat that trip this year. Meanwhile, the 2024 economy was great and my 401K and our retirement savings grew nicely, as did the flowers and vegetables in our garden, which yielded a bountiful harvest that we're still enjoying.
So in some very tangible ways, there were good times and events in 2024, and things could have been worse … because things can always be worse. Still, my overall assessment is that on balance, it wasn't a good year because I was too preoccupied and disappointed, no matter how good certain moments were, to be steadily blessed with optimism. In fact, 2020, the worst of the pandemic years, was relaxing by comparison with the worry and angst of 2024.
So … my New Year’s resolution: I'm going to live in the moment and be content this year. I won't go so far as “to say “happy,” but I'll certainly hang on to that concept as a hope. Contentment, however, is an attainable and reasonable goal that I'm pretty sure, absent some sort of catastrophe, that I can and will attain. I'll work my literal and figurative gardens, sowing and cultivating plants in the back yard, while actively maintaining and finding meaning and fulfillment in the larger intellectual garden of my mind with other, probably more important activities. There's no doubt that a sizeable section of my mental garden will be sown with hope in the form of relatively petty local political activities: tiny mustard seeds that may not germinate at all, and if they do are unlikely to grow into anything more than tiny, but nonetheless meaningful, mustard plants. Additionally, I’ll continue to engage in my enjoyable intellectual pastimes of reading upbeat books and articles and working on personal research projects. And I'll try my best to keep writing short personal essays like this one as a form of therapeutic journaling, so as to bolster my sense of hope and personal agency.
My mission is to maintain a well-grounded and meaningful sense of contentment as I spin with this beautiful earth around the sun for the 72nd time in my life. And to that end, I hereby resolve to accept and appreciate what the future holds with as much grace, acceptance, and enjoyment as I can muster. I further resolve to self-consciously avoid wallowing in the mud pit of regret for lost dreams, and to discount the softening of fact-based reality as just another transient and delusional zeitgeist that, in the end, won't be any more durable than the glorious époque of American prosperity and greatness in which I’ve been fortunate to live my life thus far.
It is truly disappointing to see American virtue disintegrate at this point in my life. But I'm old enough to know that I cannot solve or bear the weight of the world’s problems. And I’m experienced enough to know that I must narrow the orbit of my dreams and expectations to conserve my imagination and hope. I’ll definitely continue to fight the good fight as best I can. But I’ll do so with the knowledge that the rules and assumptions and even the goals have changed. And that in order to avoid the utter defeat of irrelevance in the new order I must first accept Reinhold Niebuhr's admonition to change the things we can change, but also to accept the things we can’t change and be wise enough to know the difference. And what I know is that at this moment, for this year, it seems most important to focus on the third part of that prayer.
I can do this, and I hope you can find your own path to a more palatable year!
Happy New Year to ALL!!!!