Up The Resolution

Have you thought up a New Year's resolution yet? That's the tradition, after all... make a resolution for the new year; some personal improvement, perhaps. Start a diet, strive for more, become more (or less) assertive, change how we interact with others, and so on.

I made a resolution many years ago which changed my life. I have stuck to it for many, many years now. And that's a problem, isn't it? Sticking to a New Year's resolution. We make them, often announce them to friends and/or family, and then abandon them within days or weeks.

Resolutions are just difficult to keep for very long. Experts tell us we should not make grandiose ones, that we have a better chance of keeping ones that entail making only a small change in our behavior. And that making several small, seemingly insignificant, ones will not only be more easily kept but will produce the significant change we want.

Of course, that presumes we can break down the behavior we wished to change into its component parts. Perhaps into its smallest component parts. Most of us cannot do that. It takes a self-awareness that would, to me, preclude our developing the behaviors we have come to dislike in the first place.

My favorite analogy regarding resolutions is about the times I tried to quit smoking as a teen. I tried on many occasions to quit that habit. I don't recall if I ever used it as a New Year's resolution but I don't think that matters. A resolution is a resolution, is it not? I would decide to quit at the end of a day wherein I had smoked more than my usual pack a day. I would throw away the remains of whatever pack I had in my pocket. I would resolve firmly (in my mind) to not smoke again and go home and go to bed.

In the morning, I would get up, get dressed, and head off for school or whatever I was going to do that day. As I started out, I would habitually tap my shirt pocket and realize it was empty. I would then stop at the 7-Eleven a couple of blocks from my house and buy a pack of cigarettes. Yes, I would have completely forgotten that I had resolved to quit smoking. I would buy the pack, open it, shake or tap out a cigarette, stick in in my mouth, light it, and continue on my way to wherever I was going. Often, it would not be until I was on my second or third smoke that I would remember my resolution.

There were other behaviors, other habits, that I needed to break in order to quit.  I just hadn't broken it down yet. You see, a behavior, a habit, isn't just one thing. It's a group of supporting behaviors/habits which grow up around the one you dislike and you may be almost completely unaware of these.

Oh, that one resolution I made way back when? The one I have always kept?

To never make another New Year's Resolution.

It's Time to Step Off That Cliff

I am reminded of that scene where Butch and Sundance were staring at the rushing waters below and contemplating jumping to escape the posse. Butch is urging that they jump and Sundance is reluctant, he wants to shoot it out. Sundance tells Butch that he can't swim and Butch says in response:

"Hell, the fall will probably kill you!"

And then they jump. 
 
According to the scare tactics of the political punditry and media world, we are headed for a fiscal cliff... or a fiscal slope, they don't seem to know for sure. If it's a cliff, everything will come apart at once. Your paycheck will shrink, prices will rise (in a skyrocketry fashion), and layoffs will abound as companies frantically try to cut costs or simply go under. If it's a slope then these things will still happen but over a longer period of time.

We will all be affected, they say, in one way or the other.

In the end, the rich will pay more in taxes but so will everyone else.  And we'll adapt. We'll shrug and just keep on going. Unemployment will go up but, for the vast majority, it'll just be tough times where we have to make careful choices about how we spend what money we have.

I don't think the Congress will come up with a real solution that will actually work. This has been coming for a long, long time and any attempt by Congress to fix things at this late date will likely just push off the inevitable for another few months or a year.

I am one of those who say "Let it happen!"

It's like when you were a child and Mom wanted you to take that icky tasting medicine. In the end, you just shut your eyes (and maybe held your nose) and let her put that spoonful of terrible in your mouth and you swallowed. Because, in the end, there was no escape.

They tell addicts that the first step in getting straight is to accept that you have a problem and then just take the pain of withdrawal.

It's time, I think.

And, to be honest, I do not see that the president is all that worried. I think he realizes it won't hurt him in any way. He'll just blame the Republicans for not making a deal. And the media will back him up. In reality, it was both political parties that created this mess. It's been building for decades.

Hold onto your hats, folks, we are in for a rough ride.

Maybe It's Not All Doom and Gloom

Concerned about what used to be called "Global Warming" and is now called "Global Climate Change?"  Me too. Although I am concerned more about how we are reacting to it than with trying to forestall it or reverse it. I believe our greatest strength as a species is our ability to adapt. Yet, we seem to be ignoring that in favor of panic and a vain (I believe) desire to avoid the seemingly inevitable.

Now, we seem to be learning that climate change might have been what made us what we are. This article,  Erratic Environment May Be Key to Human Evolution, offers the argument that rapid changes in environment forced changes in diet which forced changes in behavior and how our brains worked. And may even have increased brain power.

From the article:

"Early humans went from having trees available to having only grasses available in just 10 to 100 generations, and their diets would have had to change in response," Magill said in a statement. "Changes in food availability, food type, or the way you get food can trigger evolutionary mechanisms to deal with those changes. The result can be increased brain size and cognition, changes in locomotion and even social changes — how you interact with others in a group."

If this proves out, could it turn our view of the changing environment on its pointy little head?

I can only hope.
 
 

The rich ain't so bad

I wish I was rich. I've always felt this way. Never wanted to be famous, just filthy rich. Of course, since I had no ambition and was never willing to make the kind of effort, or take the necessary risks, it would take to get rich I didn't have that proverbial snowball's chance. 

Still, I managed to avoid envy and resentment toward the amazingly wealthy. Somehow. And, of late, I see a lot of that. Anger at the "1%" seems not only pointless (they don't care, I think) but foolish.

Most wealthy people got there through hard work and dedication. Traits that usually are admired everywhere. Except by the Occupy Wall Street folks, it seems. Oh sure, there are some who merely inherited their wealth but that wealth is there because someone in their family's history worked his butt off, took risks, and created jobs for other people. And probably inspired others to seek success too which also likely provided jobs and goods and services that made not only this country but people around the world better off.

I will give you an example:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112753910/spacex-grasshopper-rocket-test-with-dummy-122512/ 

From the article...

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of the company, said that the launch was a success...

He didn't make his money in this venture, he made it before he started up SpaceX. But the money he made, the success he enjoyed, allowed him to start this company.

Just something to consider.



 

What's Your Greatest Fear?

Roosevelt, in his first inauguration speech, once famously intoned "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Looking back on that statement, I think it both makes sense and makes no sense. He was talking about the Great Depression and people were afraid; afraid of the future which looked bleak indeed but also of the many problems which seemed insurmountable. Roosevelt gave them hope. Hope tends to help us conquer fear, I think.

While pondering this, a question came to my mind... What is my greatest fear? What frightens me above all else?

Mulling it over, I came up with my answer: It depends on the situation.

When I was a small child, my greatest fear was of abandonment. I had nightmares about it. It was an irrational fear; my parents would never have abandoned me (though they may have had cause to from time to time) and I believe I knew that at some level... near the surface. But deep inside me, in that most insecure part of me, I feared abandonment more than just about anything else... except maybe my older brother... the bully.

But I have had many fears in my life. I feared I would always be short and skinny. In a way, I feared fear itself too. That is, I was afraid of being a coward. I am sure I was not alone in that fear but it's mostly a guy thing and it is very real. I became afraid of heights over time. I still have a fear of heights (acrophobia) but it's mostly that I suffer from vertigo. I used to overcome the acrophobia fairly easily just by will power. I would climb a ladder reluctantly but determined and, while I was never comfortable at any height above a few feet, eventually I would relax enough to feel confident. Vertigo took that away.

And I always had a fear of what others, especially girls and women, thought of me. Girls, especially, scared the heck out of me. One of the reasons I drank heavily in my teens and early twenties was to overcome that fear. It masked it, allowed me to relax, any miscues or gaffs could be blamed on the alcohol.  It also dealt nicely with that fear of being a coward. Get me drunk enough (which wasn't difficult to do) and I was fearless.

I also had a fear of failure. Undoubtedly related to that fear of what others might think of me, it kept me from taking risks when opportunities presented themselves. It kept me on that path to ultimate mediocrity (my greatest achievement). Thinking about this fear of failure, I have come to recognize I also had a fear of success. Succeed and people expect you to continue to succeed. I never felt I could repeat successes.

I can look back on my life and find reasons why I had these fears and why I let them control my life but the reasons are merely excuses. And now that I know that, I cannot go back and change my life.