After I sent a few thoughts to my immediate family yesterday about New Year’s resolutions, a sister-in-law in California sent her own personal favorite back to me:
If you should survive to a hundred and five, think of all you’ll derive out of being alive.
And here is the best part, you’ll have a head start, if you are among the very young at heart.
You might recognize those words. Written in the 1950s, they’ve been sung by everyone from Frank Sinatra, to Shawn Colvin and Tony Bennett, to Tom Waits, to Jimmy Durante, to, yes, Donald Duck. My California in-laws have been in an awfully tough patch in their lives, so if they can live by those words, we can too.
Of course some New Year’s resolutions are much more easily said than done. That’s why, on the eve of the new year of 2021, The New York Times published a piece by a reporter who covers mental health titled, “Try Downsizing Your Resolutions.” A single sentence sort of sums it up: “For New Year’s resolutions to work, avoid pie-in-the-sky wishes and focus instead on goals that are doable and easily measurable.”
What that means is, it might be wise not to resolve to make a massive fortune or lose a massive amount of weight. Don’t put yourself in a position where you might be setting yourself up to fail. That doesn’t help anybody.
Maybe that’s why The Times on yesterday’s New Year’s Eve offered about a dozen readers’ resolutions that anyone can embrace. Resolutions that are more about how you act than what you achieve. For me, four in particular stood out, which I am slightly re-writing only for the purpose of making them consistent with the theme of a New Year’s resolution:
• “When you make a decision, ask yourself, ‘Does this light me up’?'”
• “Remind yourself when you’re having a bad day that your track record for eventually getting through bad days is 100%, and that’s pretty good.”
• “When the wrench is on the nut, tighten it. In other words, if you’re already touching a piece of mail, deal with it. If you see a thing you’ll need soon, buy it now. If an uncomfortable conversation comes up, have it rather than deflecting it.”
• “If there is an issue bothering you, think to yourself, ‘Will this still be an issue in one week or in one month?’ If the answer is no, it’s a small problem so let the stress go and move on.”
That last one is a variation of something I try to live by, my favorite word in any language: “Malesh.” It’s Arabic, and I learned about it during the years I covered the Middle East, where millions need to practice “malesh” every day of their difficult lives. An Egyptian writer says it means, “There’s nothing to it.” My own colloquial translation is, “Don’t sweat the stuff you can’t control.” Whether you’ve missed a flight or you’re too sick to work or bad weather made you cancel plans for a picnic, just think, “Malesh.”
And while I hope you’ll resolve to add “malesh” to your vocabulary, I hope you’ll also resolve to drop two other words.
The first one is “worry.” Worry causes stress and doesn’t solve anything at all. If something causes concern, deal with it, but no purpose is served by stressing over what hasn’t happened yet.
The second is “regret.” The same principle applies. What happened has happened. Or to use a popular phrase, “It is what it is.” Move on. You can learn from regret, but don’t let your stomach churn over it.
Then again, maybe your goal this New Year’s ought to be not to make any New Year’s resolution at all. My wife yesterday spotted this on Facebook, by a woman named Donna Ashworth:
“Why do we start a new year, with promises to improve?
Who began this tradition of never-ending pressure?
I say, the end of a year, should be filled with congratulation, for all we survived.
And I say a new year should start with promises to be kinder to ourselves, to understand better just how much we bear, as humans on this exhausting treadmill of life.
And if we are to promise more, let’s pledge to rest, before our bodies force us.
Let’s pledge to stop, and drink in life as it happens.
Let’s pledge to strip away a layer of perfection to reveal the flawed and wondrous humanity we truly are inside.”
Which brings me back to how my sister-in-law closed out yesterday’s email, with another refrain from the song “Young At Heart”:
“You can laugh when your dreams fall apart at the seams.”
We could all stand to try that. Maybe start with the next dawn.
Happy new year… from my very first minute of 2023.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 36-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Thanks, Greg. Have a happy and healthy 2023.
Pat & Mike
malesh rather reminds me of taarof
https://www.mei.edu/education/blog/what-is-taarof