Promises Not to Keep - My New Year's Non-Resolution

You say you want a resolution. Well-ell you know we all want to change the world.

I don't have any New Year's resolutions this time around. Not that I don't need a barrel full, as I am a poster child of imperfections:

1) being of little to no assistance to my beleaguered wife in even the most basic of life's responsibilities

2)  doing almost nothing to take care of my aging and breaking down body

3) spending far, far too much of my day staring at my cell phone hoping my latest blog post will somehow capture the attention of more than a handful of the very bored, or begging the stock market to inform me it is quite ok to retire now

4) despite my best intentions to devote myself with as much energy as possible to lessening the plight of those whose lives have taken a decidedly hard turn, doing little more than spending as much energy as possible advising everyone I intend to devote myself with as much energy as possible to assisting those whose lives have taken a decidedly hard turn

5) grousing endlessly about the deplorable state of our political union,  announcing my distaste with the President and his party and then taking absolutely no steps to change anything

I hardly read books, I do not listen well enough to what others are saying, I basically just spend my days in an endless daze.

So why you may ask (if you managed to read this far) would I not at least focus on one of these deficiencies and resolve to make a change for the better?  

Because of all my shortcomings, the worst is my laziness. Why do today what you can talk about doing tomorrow? And while Shakespeare might speak of our tomorrows creeping at a petty pace, my resolve is far slower than that. In fact it is non-existent.

So why waste the energy this year promising to do what I have not done before, or worse, making a feeble effort to do what I said I would do and then failing miserably to follow through? It is that failure which is the real issue, the disappointment in myself for not meeting my self stated expectations, the true quicksand of my life.

And so, if I have no goals for the coming year, then I will not fall short, I will not have that gnawing pain eating at me. I will be at peace. 

So my wish for all of you this year is that you do not make the same mistake I have in the past. That you come to the same inevitable conclusion as I have. That you free up your tomorrow's to do all the wrong things that you are going to do anyway, only now insulated from the promises you knew deep in your heart you would never maintain.

I have now decided I have a resolution this year after all. To spread the gospel of the non-resolution. But I fear I am far too lazy to do even that. So just forget that promise. I could never keep it.

You say you'll change my constitution.
Well-ell you know, you better free your mind instead.