Rarely has a year been as hated as 2016. The poor thing; so unfairly accused. After all, all 2016 did was provide 365 days. It was up to us to fill them. Each day, we had a choice: to be resolved, to live our convictions or to let it slide.
Maybe our parents failed us. Maybe their parents failed them. Somewhere along the way, we, as a society, lost sight of concepts like “moral character” and “fortitude.” We replaced critical thinking with wishful thinking; self-interest rightly understood with selfishness, pure and simple. We forgot that discipline is the difference between what you want now and what you want most.
And so for years, we acted or didn’t act, day in and day out, and one thing led to another and things unfolded and continued to unfold in a seamless flow until suddenly we are shocked. We look around and don’t like what we see. We feel betrayed somehow and who better to blame than 2016, the bastard! Like they say, no single snowflake thinks it’s responsible for the avalanche. But really, 2016 was just one sunrise after another.
Now, everyone clamours for the death of 2016 like some sacrificial lamb — as though history has no momentum; as though actions have no consequences. We use the same magical thinking behind New Year’s resolutions, fantasies that confuse wanting something, with making something happen; if only I believe!
At the root, we fail to grasp the difference between belief and conviction. The root of belief is “to hold dear or love.” When we believe things, we love them — or the idea of them — so much that we can’t bear to think they might not be real. Conviction is different; as much a sentence as a supposition. The root of conviction is actually “with victory” and describes being overcome by an argument, overcome by reality. We usually fight a conviction before we become it.
We stack up beliefs like bricks to build up a wall between the world and how the world is supposed to be — and then live in the fantasy land of belief. We develop hard brittle shells of belief as a defense against a reality we fear we are too weak to survive.
Ironically, the origin of “resolution” is actually the same as “dissolution” — it meant to break things down. There’s a powerful message hidden in the transition from a resolution as dissolving to a resolution as holding firm: to find our firm core we must allow all the false beliefs to fall away. Successful resolution isn’t about “willpower,” it’s about uncovering the antifragile convictions that grow stronger as they are tested in the world by melting away the false beliefs; dissolving the brittle shell of defenses we’ve developed.
So, as we move into 2017, as you prepare for 365 new days, I encourage you to go old-school — resolve to let go of things that don’t matter so that you can uncover the things that really do. Don’t tack on new beliefs and new shoulds. Commit instead to focusing every day on what is real and what really matters.
Here are five daily practices that will help:
1) Start each day by reminding yourself what is really real and important to you. Write a letter to a young person you love or to yourself as a young person telling them all the secrets you’ve learned so far — what leads to happiness and what leads to suffering. What are the lies you seem to fall for and what are the truths that set you free? What are the questions that still baffle you — and what are your hunches. Re-write this letter every morning.
2) After you’ve reminded yourself what is really important, use Annie Dillard’s advice (“After all, how we live our days is, of course, how we live our lives.”) and ask yourself how you want to use this day right here right now to live the kind of life you want to live (Really, this day — the one with too many tasks and an inconvenient meeting and all of the other nonsense that is the constant background noise and always ALWAYS will be.)
3) See any upset — feelings of frustration, anger, sadness, hopelessness — as a sign that you’ve bumped up against that hard, brittle shell of ego defenses, all those false beliefs about who you’re supposed to be or how the world is supposed to be. The upset is a chance to melt those defenses to allow the real you to come out of the shell and experience life more fully. Let it be a call to live out the values that mean the most to you — to be courageous, compassionate, loving and kind.
4) Do at least one compassionate thing every day. It could be something for yourself or for someone else. It doesn’t matter — the world needs more of it in any form possible. And it doesn’t have to take long. Simple things repeated every day are more powerful than you imagine.
5) Find your flock. Testify. Tell the world whether they want to hear or not about what makes your heart sing and what makes your heart break. Confess your perceived failures and the things that make you feel strong. But know that you are only doing this for yourself — to speak a truth that might only be true for you, but to speak it just the same. Once this happens, as Martin Buber says, we connect “I and Thou” and everything is transformed.
I know none of this sounds like world-saving stuff, but I actually think it’s the only stuff that actually has a hope in hell of saving us from the current insanity of the world.
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