RESOLVING NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

It is a New Year! Your favorite sport team's season now is over, with its dismal losing record. The celebratory parties are over, possibly leaving sobering concerns about one's behavior at them. It is time to confront 2018. As T.S. Eliot put it, "For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice."

Traditionally, people make resolutions at the first of a new year to improve behavior or to set goals for the coming twelve months. According to G.K. Chesterton, "Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things he will certainly do nothing effective."

The problem is that, while it may be easy to make New Year resolutions, it seems downright impossible to actually keep or even to implement them. Easy to make, easy to break. So this year I have decided that it is far more realistic to make resolutions for other people rather than for myself. This could offer joy to all concerned. As Tennyson said, "Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering 'It will be happier.'"

I offer to all the following four resolutions concerning water:

RESOLUTION 1: To drink more water. Mark twain said "Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody." On a more positive note, Thoreau uttered "Water is the only drink for a wise man."

RESOLUTION 2: To conserve water by using less when circumstances permit.

RESOLUTION 3: To avoid wasting water, for example from such causes as leaking faucets, spigots and toilets, and the like.

RESOLUTION 4: To avoid flushing things into drains and toilets that could be detrimental to the wastewater system.

The fact is that these resolutions, and all other possible resolutions in general, in reality simply are a matter of common sense. Perhaps the most important resolution that anyone could make is to resolve to use one's own common sense. De Vinci stated "Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation...even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind." Or, as Tennyson exclaimed, "Ring out the false, ring in the true."


© Daniel J. Kucera 2018