Let’s resolve to ‘Make America Great at Last’

Dear Editor: New Year’s Day has come and gone, and with it my contrived resolve. I’ve never kept a New Year’s resolution. I’ve initiated change only after all too often hearing about and observing my faults, gradually acknowledging their existence, then striving to improve myself, to do and be better. My road to change, healing and self-acceptance has been a long and winding one.

Many are farther along that road than I. Maybe they were earlier to begin traveling it and learning to handle the curves. Maybe they had parents who were totally accepting of them, and self-acceptance was their inheritance.

Or maybe they’re people whose “self-acceptance” is skin deep, a defense, a wall built as a border against self-doubt, and who, as a result, are driven not to change themselves but to alter reality, not to improve but to prove themselves.

Three years ago, one such person proved himself to segments of our country, who, rather than embracing of change, are often frightened and inflamed by it, resisting every change but the one that’s a true threat to them: climate change.

Change is frightening. But self-improvement is transformative, and helps us handle our fears.

Naturally, the improvement of all selves, all lives would be even more transformative. Just imagine if this year, we resolved to divert some of our self-improvement efforts in that wider direction. We might heal not only ourselves but our country, and might “Make America Better Again” — and maybe even, in some year down the road, “Great at Last.”

Tom Cherwin Saugerties