My younger grand child, Gabriel greeted me on New Year's Day with a loving hug, smile, and question, "What are your New Year's revolutions Grandpa?" Jamie, three years older and much more sophisticated noted the "error," corrected him observing they are resolutions. I have been thinking about whether it was an error. I think Gabriel may have had a point.
A resolution is a typically insincere commitment. Most often, I think, many are things we acknowledge we should do. I know family members who have resolved to quit smoking over and over for decades. Besides a certain humor value, until recently, I almost never saw a resolution last past January. FitBit and its competitors have changed this a bit. Drop a couple hundred dollars, or get your love to do so, and suddenly a fitness or weight loss resolution has if not teeth, at least longevity.
But what of revolutions? Revolutions live near the Book of Common Prayer's scarry call for those who confess, "amendment of life." For most of the last seventy years, I am not sure I wanted that amendment of life thing, although as a civil rights demonstrator, folkie, anti-war, progressive, I have to admit wanting to amend other people's lives. That indeed may be my problem.
So what are your revolutions? I hope mine will be getting out of the house, into the ride business, (Uber) and back to the business of living. Enough of the cancer, back injury, and heart problems. Yes they are with me, and yes I cannot get rid of them. But I can be revolutionary, I can simply live while I ignore them. I can stop being obsessed by either my health or self.
That may be my personal revolution, but it is not enough. Revolutions are never enough. Yes, here, on social media of one sort or another, I think the revolution demands more. I need to find ways to have an impact. I dunno where I will end but for no. I think I need to be playing and singing revolutionary songs again. Hand me down my dulcimer.
As my favorite science fiction heroine says, "lets be about it."
A resolution is a typically insincere commitment. Most often, I think, many are things we acknowledge we should do. I know family members who have resolved to quit smoking over and over for decades. Besides a certain humor value, until recently, I almost never saw a resolution last past January. FitBit and its competitors have changed this a bit. Drop a couple hundred dollars, or get your love to do so, and suddenly a fitness or weight loss resolution has if not teeth, at least longevity.
But what of revolutions? Revolutions live near the Book of Common Prayer's scarry call for those who confess, "amendment of life." For most of the last seventy years, I am not sure I wanted that amendment of life thing, although as a civil rights demonstrator, folkie, anti-war, progressive, I have to admit wanting to amend other people's lives. That indeed may be my problem.
So what are your revolutions? I hope mine will be getting out of the house, into the ride business, (Uber) and back to the business of living. Enough of the cancer, back injury, and heart problems. Yes they are with me, and yes I cannot get rid of them. But I can be revolutionary, I can simply live while I ignore them. I can stop being obsessed by either my health or self.
That may be my personal revolution, but it is not enough. Revolutions are never enough. Yes, here, on social media of one sort or another, I think the revolution demands more. I need to find ways to have an impact. I dunno where I will end but for no. I think I need to be playing and singing revolutionary songs again. Hand me down my dulcimer.
As my favorite science fiction heroine says, "lets be about it."
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