‘A Miracle to Contemplate’: Resolutions and Change

“All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.”

– Henry David Thoreau, “Walden”

New Year’s resolutions are a funny business. Culturally, we love them, even though, privately and individually, I’ve found that people often express more skepticism than hope when it comes to their effectiveness – a sentiment that seems to be supported by the many such resolutions soon abandoned as life gets in the way of our own best-laid plans.

Nonetheless, there seems to be something about the beginning of a new year that calls for reflection on what’s past and a resetting of our plans and aspirations for the future. And although many a New Year’s resolution, made in deadly earnest, has been subsequently flung to the wayside – sometimes by late January or early February – still the allure of change, and our deep and sometimes desperate hope for it, is most definitely real.

We all hunger – in some area of our lives or another – for the dawn of a new day, for that bright morning sun with the power to melt what’s frozen in us and bring about some kind of transformation, some kind of metamorphosis or sea change.

If I’m perfectly honest, this new year scares me just a little bit. The past year has been a tough one, as I’ve written about elsewhere, and I don’t yet know what to expect from the year that’s dawning. One thing I do know is that none of the standard New Year’s resolutions really seem up to the task of addressing the challenges and expectations of this particularly difficult season of my life. It’s not that I don’t hope for growth and positive change in the new year, but it seems like all my old expectations have been tempered by grief, tested by my time on the road that I’ve been traveling.

Change in our lives is often a mysterious thing, both elusive and inescapable at the same time. We can struggle so hard for change, expending enormous effort and weathering enormous frustration while pursuing the outcomes we desire. And yet, at the same time, every single bit of the universe, down to its tiniest components, is already in constant flux and motion. Change is one of the only essential rules of life as we know it. Every day, every hour, a birth or a death, a new beginning or one more unmistakable reminder of the transience of all things.

We tend to either fear change or desire it based on how we think its coming will impact us personally. But we certainly can’t stop it. For good or for ill, change will always come. But maybe there’s another way for us to think about it, somewhere out beyond fear and desire.

It’s not that I don’t have hopes for the year ahead, and I’m sure I’ll make some plans and maybe even set a few goals. But I suppose if I could make just one resolution this year, it would be to let go of all the myriad expectations I’ve been holding on to – all of my well-worn ideas about how things ought to be and how to get everything (and everyone) around me to align with my own plans and schemes. Instead, I’d like to learn to be more at peace with things just as they are, more at home in the present moment, and more capable of just going with the flow – following the rhythm of life as it unfolds, trusting more and worrying less.

As it says in the Tao Te Ching, “If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to.”

Or, if you prefer the lyrics of Semisonic instead, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

Of course, things being what they are, life being as it is, I’ll probably be back to all my incessant planning and machinations, all my relentless scheming, before I even know it. But whether my resolution lasts a day or a lifetime, I’ll try and make the most of it while I can. After all, one moment, used well, may be all the time we really need – and, in the end, it may be all the time we really have.

In the meantime, I think I’ll try actually letting go of some of those expectations I’ve been holding on to so tightly – or at least try holding them a little more loosely – learning to accept things as they come, and allowing life to unfold, as it always does, in its own sweet time.