LeaderFOCUS - a weekly cyber-memo designed to help keep YOU on task

MONDAY December 27, 1999  VOLUME I Number 17

FOCUS - Resolution

If “New Year’s Resolutions” are as traditional as blinking colored lights on the eves at Christmas time, or eggnog on Christmas Eve, or an angel hovering over the top of the Tree, or a rousing rendition of “Auld Lang Syne” at the stroke of Midnight, then this will be the Mother of All Resolution Seasons.  It is after all, the final week of 1999.

It’s true.  Think about it. 

But not everyone considers it a significant turning point.

Like me, you’ve heard those cynics who smugly ask, “what’s the big deal?”  They shrug and go on.  This is just one more monotonous passing of a random calendar year.  The clock turns and turns.  Always has.  Always will.  So what’s another New Year?  It’s the government’s excuse to get one more tax return out of you.  And it’s a marketing ploy.  It’s the media’s search for one more reason to create expensive animated video graphics with high-energy audio.  Grab more ratings. Create a little mass hysteria.  It’s good for business.  Give the “experts” one more highly paid opportunity to pontificate – fill the programming void with mundane advice on how to cope.

Millennium shmillenium.  Yada yada yada.

Even you may well be cynical about the hype.  I can’t blame you.

But I’ll take the risk.  In spite of the sharp and pervasive skepticism of the current era, I’m going to suggest that this week you embark on one more attempt at positive change.  Do it with reckless abandon.  Not just for the New Year.  This time for the New Millennia. 

Year-end is a good time for some personal reflection.  Call it what you like. 

It’s a time to celebrate the success of the past.  To be grateful for the abundance.  To high-five colleagues, family and friends.  It’s also a time to make at the very least an attempt to learn from the disappointments.  To consider the lack of discipline.  The excesses.  The missed details that ended up making life difficult.  Distractions that could have been avoided.  Relationships that fell by the wayside.  You know, the things you know you could have done better.  It’s a time to recall the goals that at one time inspired such energy and enthusiasm and direction… and then got lost somewhere in the shuffling of limited free time.  It’s time to rethink those goals, truth be told, that you really would like to resurrect.  Take one more run at a couple of them.  Give ‘em one just more shot.

This is the stuff of the New Year’s Resolution (NYR).

You’ve been around long enough.  At least once, you gave NYR a try.  It was a noble effort.  Seemed like the right thing to do.  But the whole exercise brought you to a single unhappy conclusion.  NYR does not work.

So you reduced your annual NYR to one – and only one.  It goes like this: you will never again make another New Year’s Resolution. 

It’s too painful.  NYR does little more than set you up for an additional load of guilt.  You are who you are.  Just accept yourself as you are.  This year end admission that you have shortcomings and failures and some self-destructive habits and a tendency to sabotage your own success - well - it’s all just bad karma.  Why dwell on it?  And why pretend that you have the capacity to change those old behaviors with the simple expression of a “resolution” when you know full well that it’ll only be one more temporary, short-lived attempt that will fade away like the morning dew?

You’re not into self-inflicted pain – so you’ve narrowed NYR to that one-NYR-that-fits-all: No Resolutions.  Period.

If that’s you, it’s OK.  Read on anyway.

On the other end of that spectrum, for those of us who do take advantage of this annual attempt at self-improvement, consider this.  NYR gets us back to basics.  We think broadly about our lives.  We get philosophical.

It takes you all the way back to your view of what it means to be human.  On this level, thinkers fall into three categories: the materialist, the dichotomist and the trichotomist.  Stay with me now.

The materialist believes that what you see and touch and feel is all there is.  Nothing exists beyond the material world.  You’ve got a material body and that’s it.

Last night, a friend told me about a sixty-one year old school teacher whose winter strep infection advanced so seriously and rapidly that last Sunday night, six days before Christmas, he died.  Physicians and family stood by helplessly.  He responded to no treatment known to medicine.  He and his wife and his children were committed materialists.  When he breathed his last breath, he was gone.  My friend said the grieving was immediate, dark, tragic and at its core – desperate.  There was no hope.  It was The End.

The materialist is right.  The material world is real.  But when he says that’s all there is, I disagree.

The dichotomist believes in something beyond the physical.  The body is material.  But the spirit is immaterial.  It’s mysterious, and in many respects, beyond the typical scope of the hard sciences.  While biology and chemistry and anatomy and medicine have catalogued the workings of the material body – the spirit is something else.  The spirit animates the body.  It encapsulates all of the characteristic traits that make up what we call your personality.  It drives your human responses to life’s circumstances.  Your spirit embraces love and loyalty and truth and beauty and anger and joy and grief and justice and fairness and friendship.  It makes distinctions between good and evil and right and wrong and excellence and mediocrity.

But you cannot put spirit on a tiny glass slide and slip it under a microscope.  Or pour it into a vial, mix it with other chemicals and break it down into its constituent parts.  Spirit is mysterious – so mysterious that the materialist dismisses the whole notion of the existence of spirit as preposterous.  But for the dichotomist, spirit is as real as the body.

The trichotomist takes it one step further.  The immaterial is really two parts: spirit and soul.  The soul is the immaterial part of you that links you to something eternal.  It’s also mysterious – and above science.  But it goes deeper than spirit.  It explains that longing to know the God of the Universe.  It’s that inner part that contemplates issues that go beyond the here and now, and deals with the big themes of theology like Redemption and Sin and Salvation and the part of you that feels connected with all of Creation including other Human Beings.  You are self-aware – but you are also aware of that soul that takes you beyond yourself.  Something powerful in you is touched when you take time to gaze into the night sky under a full moon.  Or watch a sunset light up the clouds.  Or slowly pan a landscape of mountain peaks.  Or watch the behavior of a rare and delicate bird through your binoculars.  Or sing a worship song.  Or read one of those timely lines of Scripture that speaks profoundly to your experience.

You can’t really explain it.  But your soul has been nourished.

NYR generally fits into one of these three categories.  You’ve guessed it.  I’m a diehard trichotomist.  I believe we’ve all got needs in all three areas.  Body, Spirit and Soul.

And this little annual review that many of us entertain about this time of year involves all three. 

We talk about our physical health.  Diet.  Nutrition.  Our need for cardio-vascular work-outs.  Muscle tone.  Cut down the fat.  Reduce the carbs.  Increase the protein.  Cut down the alcohol.  Limit the caffeine.  Power walks – minimum thirty minutes.  Mountain hikes.  Mountain bikes.  Marathons.  Iron man.  Iron woman.  Increased longevity.  These are the NYRs of the Body.

We review our attitudes.  We’re going to be more cheerful.  Read good books.  Develop our minds.  Keep a journal.  Stay professionally fresh.  Monitor our tasks by regularly consulting our daily planners.  Answer all our calls before we leave work.  Leave work when we leave work.  Make time for family members.  Set aside regular sessions for something wonderfully frivolous and utterly non-productive.  We’re going to laugh more.  Complain less.  Savor the moments.  These are the NYRs of the Spirit.

We consider God.  We’re going to explore the wonders of creation.  Set aside time for reflection and prayer.  Study and incorporate the inspired Scriptures into our daily lives.  Teach our children the basics of spiritual realities.  Learn to worship – with a group of other like-minded believers and on our own, in a quiet place where no one is watching.  Commit ourselves to meeting the needs of others – without expecting anything in return.  Take love and commitment to the next level.  These are the NYRs of the Soul.

* * * * * * * *

It’s Monday.  You’ve got now ‘til Friday night.  Find a quiet little corner – no interruptions.  Think about your life.  Do it, even if you are a certified card-carrying cynic.

A resolution means you make a determination. You make a decision.  You reach a conclusion.  You firm up your mind.  You make a judgment.  You map out a course of action. You resolve some of the conflicts.

Fill in the blanks: 

Whereas ____________________________,

be it resolved that _______________________________. 

Make it a Y2K-NYR.  And if you do, I promise you this – in the next Millennia you’ll move just that much closer to the life you really want.

You may even enjoy some added benefits.

The whole process could well preserve your body, lift your spirit and save your soul.

© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 1999

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