National Post (National Edition)
resolutions for the 12 months ahead,
To not care abour resolutions, kettlebels and beach houses, and pursue happiness Lisa Machado
I have never been a New Year's resolution person. When people would ask for mine, I'd play along, choosing the regulars: to exercise, drink less and call my mother more.
When my kids were young, I started a resolution tradition with a twist. On New Year's Eve, we would put together a list of what we hoped would happen by the end of the year. Things like reading more books and getting better grades often made the list. Then, subscribing to the theory that if you read your goals every day, your mind makes them happen, I would post the list on the fridge, and at the end of the year we would see what we accomplished.
The list-making ended when my son was 10 and he scribbled the word “poo” all over the paper. When I asked him why, he said, “Mama, I don't like those lists. They make me sad. Nothing ever happens.” It got me thinking about the consistent No. 2 on my list — to own a beach house somewhere hot. This will probably never happen, yet year after year, I hope. Is that bad? If you ask my mother, the answer is yes. “When you live in hope, you die in despair,” she would say.
But maybe my little guy was on to something. Does expectation-setting New Year's resolutions kill your chill? Maybe.
I spotted one of my neighbours in the park a few months ago, wearing snazzy pink leggings and hurling a kettlebell to and fro. “This year's resolution,” she explained breathlessly as I walked by.
A few sessions later, she sat on my porch, dejected, watching the class continue without her.
“If I can't exercise when a pandemic has me pinned to my house, I am never going to be able to,” she quietly hissed, using her glass of wine to gesture towards the enthusiastic kettlebell tossers. “Or maybe you are, but the time just isn't right,” I said.
Then our grumpy 80-something male neighbour walked by. “Who cares?” he said.
Well, she cares, I guess. I care too, that the amount of exercise, alcohol and calls to my mother are pretty much the same as pre-2020. And while I am not OK with it, 2021 is a new year. But I won't be cluttering it up with hopeful resolutions. Instead, I'll be looking to amp up my happy. Instead of talking about all the ways we can make ourselves better, my kids and I will be focusing on ways to be kinder, doing more of what makes us smile and letting the burden of expectation go.
Because if this brutal year has taught us anything, it is that the little things matter the most.
To maintain the fight against the virus that ruined 2020 and to thrill in the freedoms that return once it's no longer a threat, whenever that may be Chris Knight
The first of January is the time when most people make (and often immediately break) resolutions, and I'm no exception. My list most years is pretty standard – exercise more, drink less, read more, watch more TV and movies (for work!), sleep better.
But this New Year's feels different, for two reasons. One is that the year itself needs to make some resolutions. 2020 has been heedlessly, horribly cruel. I'd like assurances that the New Year is going to kill fewer people.
There is, mind you, an odd philosophical flip-side to the death toll from COVID-19, now nearing two million worldwide. There are some people alive today who would not be, in a world where the virus didn't happen. Think of the trips not taken in 2020, the accidents that didn't happen. There's no way to know, and standing too long at the corner of what-if and what-did can drive you mad, but you might owe your life to a lockdown.
The virus has also given us weird moments of beauty. I remember a working-from-home walk in my East Toronto neighbourhood. It was 8:30 on a warm morning in late March, and as I crossed Queen Street during what would have been packed rush-hour traffic a month earlier, I saw only a lone pickup truck and a raccoon, who glared at the vehicle until it stopped, then ambled carelessly in front of it. In the nearby park, raucous bird song was the only noise, and wild chickadees lit on my hand to snack on sunflower seeds.
But the bad side of the year has far outweighed whatever grace notes it may have doled out. Which brings me to my resolutions. They fall into two types.
In the near term, along with well-meaning resolve to consume more fruit and less wine, are some practical promises. Stay home. Wear a mask. Practice physical distancing. Don't flag, don't falter. If the pandemic is like the Second World War — not a perfect metaphor, but it'll do — then we're past D-Day but nowhere near VE-Day and the end of hostilities. The virus isn't on the run yet, but we have the means, the vaccines, to make it so. We just need to persevere for the last big push. We can do this.
The second slate of resolutions, I shall make and hold in reserve for the day they are required. Because this year, I'm certain, it will all come back, the world we knew. Cinema, baseball games, festivals and concerts and parties and air travel and socializing and hugging each other. The Book of Isaiah speaks of beating swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks. I plan to turn my masks into tiny hammocks, to keep fruit (of which I resolve to eat more) from being bruised.
So I hereby resolve to enjoy it, to welcome it all. I shall thrill to every facet of air travel, and experience it as the miracle it is — we can hop across the planet! I shall revel in the presence of crowds, happy to take a packed transit vehicle to a sold-out concert or screening, calm in the face of a 30-minute wait for a table at a popular restaurant. I shall keep the memory of the strange, silvery solitude of lockdown, and be thankful for its dissolution.
I won't succeed, of course. If we kept our resolutions they wouldn't be resolutions at all; they would just be things we did. No one resolves to wake up every day, to breathe in and out. And in late 2021 you'll likely find me cursing rush-hour traffic — all those people going places! — and moaning about being unable to score tickets to a ball game or a play. It's human nature to find fault with our lot.
But it will all come back. The day will arrive when we can turn our backs on 2020, consign it to history. At the very least, we should take a last glance over our shoulders, spare a moment's thought for whatever joy it managed to bestow on us, and resolve to find all that we can, with one another, in the years to come. It'll be a promise well-kept.
To think a lot less about self-optimization and more about disparity Monika Warzecha
I always feel a bit uneasy about this time of year. It's when we're meant to focus on our personal health and self-improvement. There's the ask: what's your resolution? But the unsaid, shadowy part of that question is often: How are you fixing yourself this year? How do you intend to become prettier and thinner, more productive and less gross?
I, for one, am tired of myself. I am tired of spending so much time in my own company amid a pandemic that has blown us apart and into separate bubbles. I am tired of staring at my face in Zoom calls. Even if COVID-19 never happened, I'd probably still be a little tired of myself after years of anxiously wondering about how I should make myself better.
And so after a scary year, a sad year, a cruel year of disconnection, I don't really feel like focusing on me — maximizing my workout routine or hacking my schedule or optimizing a damn thing. In a year in which people's lives and livelihoods crumbled, I'd much rather focus on, well, what's out there.
I'm mostly healthy, if a little down-inthe-mouth. I lost my job but was then supremely lucky to get another one within a couple of months. Instead of the endless treadmill of self-improvement, maybe it's better to take myself out of the resolution question in 2021 and focus on larger ills. This year, I plan to just give cash regularly to a charity, a non-profit or an organization that's trying to address the yawning disparities in the health and well-being of those who are rich and those who are not, a gap that's worsened at an alarming rate amid the pandemic.
Resolving to quit smoking is a noble goal. So is trying to improve your metabolic health. Getting a decent amount of sleep is great. Taking baths often, calling your mom more, learning to bake bread, remembering to floss — all good. Drag one of those jade rollers up and down your face before bed if it feels nice. But so much talk about “wellness” and “self-care” deserves a raised eyebrow and aggressive air quotes. These terms have been adopted by Instagram influencers and a billion-dollar diet industry that's far more interested in selling stuff than improving anyone's long-term health.
I know myself well enough to predict that if I buy a kettlebell on Jan. 1, it will be collecting dust by Feb. 1. Donating to a food bank is not going to solve hunger. I realize charity has its limitations when it comes to baked-in, systematic problems. But set, monthly donations feel like a decent use of my good intentions and money at a time when so much seems to be falling apart for so many.
On a selfish note, it will probably make me feel a bit better, too. At a time of physical distancing, when a lot of my waking life is spent staring at a screen and trying to reach out to far-off, little faces in tiny squares, it might do me good to feel more connected to something outside myself and home.