Tag: Resolution

You’re Doing WHAT for Lent?

Wild indulgence following deprivation never seemed sensible!

Knowing that I had been raised Roman Catholic, although perhaps not understanding I’d left the church at the tender age of 13, an acquaintance asked me, “But you still give something up for Lent, right?”

Her question startled me. I hadn’t given anything up for Lent since I was 11 years old and still languishing in the prison of parochial elementary school. I’d never forgotten the nun-teacher who’d advised the 40 of us crammed into a single classroom (where, despite the overage ratio of students-to-teacher, we LEARNED–we dared not do otherwise; those nuns could be mean! Oops! Getting off the track here.) Anyway, Nun-Name-Forgotten advised us that sacrifice was good, a noble action, but of absolutely no use if we whined or were resentful. (We did and we were.) If that was the case, she advised us, we’d be far better off—and the world a much finer place—if we made a commitment to doing something: taking some positive action on behalf of ourselves, our friends, our family, or for everyone on the planet, as a Lenten resolution.

Alternately, we could commit to breaking a bad habit or developing a good habit. (Psychological science hadn’t yet, in that era, come up with that “30 days to establish a habit” concept, but at 40 days of Lent, the nun was probably on to something.)

This all came back to me recently as I watched a favorite movie, Chocolat, and recalled the many people I’d known who chose to give up chocolate for Lent. I also recalled one coworker, a darling woman, who nobly resolved to give up chocolate for Lent every single year that I knew her. And every year she broke her resolution in less than a week. Totally free of condemnation, I completely understood her failure. I never even CONSIDERED giving up chocolate. I’d sooner have given up my firstborn.

Of course, the chocolate-denied, both children and adults, indulged wildly on Easter morning, diving into Easter baskets and biting off chocolate bunny heads with all the fierce madness of deprivation. Even at the tender age of 11, this always just seemed to me to be the wrong way to go about things; consequently, my nun-teacher’s remarks were a revelation, and something that I would never forget. I don’t now recall what positive action I resolved to take during that Lenten passage so long ago, but I adopted her suggestion as a maxim and began to use it every year thereafter, even following my break with the Catholic church.

Sadly, though, just as with the sacrifices promised for the duration of Lent, the pledge to do something positive for the season falls into precisely the same category as New Year’s resolutions: noble and commendable, but rarely performed. Follow-through seems to be a gene lacking in the makeup of most human beings. I will say, though, that 40 days is a far more doable commitment than 365. Of the times I’ve resolved to take some positive action during the Lenten period, I’d say I’ve managed to adhere to my resolution at least half of the time. As for the other half, well, does start-stop-start again count? I tell myself that it does. Perhaps self-honesty might be the positive action I need to consider for the Lenten period.

Anyway, I ponder all of this each year as Christian Lent rolls around, even though I’m not precisely what most people would genuinely term Christian any longer, having sauntered down a very blended spiritual path in my lifetime. Still, if I am out and about on Ash Wednesday, I take note of those individuals whose foreheads are speckled with the grey dust that we Roman Catholic school children, chivvied to Mass early in the morning before class on that Holy Day of Obligation, were always warned we must not rub or wash off. (As if the coming season of enforced sacrifice weren’t punishment enough, we had to go about for a whole day looking as if we didn’t know the proper use of a bar of soap.) Now I wonder, glimpsing those ashy foreheads, if these people ever sat in a classroom listening to a wise nun as she explained the greater personal and societal value of positive action as opposed to deprivation and sacrifice. I wonder if it is too late for them to take that lesson to heart.

Regardless of anyone’s belief system, I think as I pass those ash-bespeckled faces, it’s still a truly wise and useful thing to set aside a few days each year trying to make ourselves, or the world, just a little bit better.

If you appreciated this essay, you might also enjoy “Tough Love for the Prodigal Son”, which you can locate by scrolling to the Archives, below. It was published on March 30, 2018.

Defining Your Word of the Year

§  I’ve used many Focus Words over the years, and I’ve learned to choose them very, very carefully!  §

I stopped making New Year’s resolutions nearly two decades ago. I saw no point in setting myself up for certain failure; it was simply depressing, and merely reinforced my bad opinion of myself. (I feel the same way about goals.  Goals are something I set just to prove to myself that I am a failure.  I don’t set goals anymore, either.)

For a long time prior to that decision, I’d followed Robert Fulghum’s sound advice: On New Year’s Day, I sat down and wrote a list of every good thing I’d done in the previous year, backdated it, and called it my resolutions. This was eminently satisfying for a number of years, even though I knew I was sort of missing the whole point.

So, casting about for some way to set myself some type of goal-yet-not-a-goal, I was struck by an idea: I could still forego a resolution, yet choose something—some character-building, life changing something, to focus on during the coming year.  Not a goal, I decided; a focus.  With that in mind, what if I chose just one word, one meaningful word, and attempted to concentrate on it throughout the coming year?  Not to accomplish it—simply keep it at the forefront of my mind, and make it active in my life.  One word was so little.  Surely I could do that much.

I liked the concept. One word, one focus, seemed like a challenge I could meet.  The trick, I realized, would be finding a way to make myself remember to focus on that word— to keep adding it to my life.  (Well, that, and picking my word in the first place.)

Amazingly, having come up with the concept, I found that my answers came easily.  I’d recently discovered that a lack of assertiveness had caused me a number of problems; assertiveness, then, seemed like a very good first focus word.  But how to keep it at the forefront of my mind?  How not to forget, not just the word itself, but the need to concentrate upon my focus word?  That was going to be the real challenge of my not-resolution.

During that first year, I found that tricking myself into remembering my focus word was the best way to go. I took post-its and scraps of note paper and proceeded to hide them throughout my home in places where I knew I would not find them to easily, yet was sure to look.  Since I wasn’t about to turn the heavy mattress on the bed more than once a year, one of the notes emblazoned with “My Focus This Year Is Assertiveness” was pushed into the thin hollow between the mattress and box springs.  Another went under the couch cushions—I had been known, from time to time, to actually lift them up and vacuum beneath them (or at least search for loose change).  And, yes, one note, slipped into a plastic bag, went into the bottom of the vegetable bin in the frig!

And, amazingly, it worked. I came across those notes again and again throughout that first year and was forced to keep my attention focused on becoming more assertive.  And while I cannot now say that it changed my life, I can say with certainty that being reminded to focus on assertiveness did make a difference.  By the end of the year, I knew that I still had a very long way to go on learning to be assertive, but I was no longer quite the wimp I’d been twelve months earlier, either.

I’ve used many Focus Words in the intervening years, and I’ve learned to choose them very, very carefully. The Universe, I’ve discovered, will cooperate with me—oh, yes, will it ever!  Choose Peace as a focus word, and every possible non-peaceful situation imaginable will be tossed at me like errant baseballs.  And, for the love of heaven, never, ever, choose Patience !

But, defiant in the face of overreaching myself, the focus word I chose for 2017 was Magnificent.

And it was.

Afterword: In 2018, the Word I chose was “Kindness”.  I was astounded to learn that kindness is not just something we extend to others, but that we must also, humbly and with gratitude, receive.  It is also something we must extend to ourselves.  Foolishly brave, in 2019 I selected the Word “Restful”.  Oh, dear! I did learn a much-needed lesson: that we choose our response to events.  In 2020, I chose the word “Recognition”.  I am still discovering all the unexpected ways in which that word has come to play in my existence.

I would love to know what Focus Word you select for 2021, if you would care to leave it in the Comments section.