Resolutions worth making and keeping

The thing is, January is inevitably a time for this sort of personal evaluation anyway.

(A time of resolutions manufactured while one is still recovering from festive cork-poppings and food poisoning triggered by the ingestion of one-too-many bite-sized sausage rolls).

I’ve tried ever-so-hard to avoid making resolutions this year. Why try to break a habit or take up a new one when the track record demonstrates momentum will surely fizzle by the start of Lent?

Not to mention that Lent begins on Feb. 6 this year, a full two weeks earlier than what I consider “normal,” thereby threatening to shorten the duration of potential resolution success even further.

Since 2008 is also the colossal year that I turn 30, I’ve decided to avoid past personal pitfalls and instead impart the wisdom of my newfound adulthood by making common resolutions for all.

So here’s a list of seven things to make your life, in 2008 and beyond, more fulfilling:

• Resolve to go to more parties at your neighbours’ houses. Community is alive and well in this city and if the interior of the neighbour’s house looks a little like your own, it’s a great way to discover fool-proof decorating tips.

• Resolve to check how you relate to your children, your spouse, your co-workers. If sweet Little Johnny all of a sudden seems to be in full-time brat mode, chances are it’s you, not him, that needs to change to create more harmony in the home.

• Resolve to teach elders in your community how to embrace Internet revolutions. My 81-year-old grandfather was absolutely chuffed to get off his apparent ice-block-in-the-middle-of-the-ocean by garnering the ability to upload episodes of his favourite 1960s British sitcom from YouTube (and subsequently sending them to everyone on his MSN list).

• Resolve to grow deeper in your faith and meditative practice. I learned recently that “mediocrity is not a Christian virtue,” a point that radically altered my understanding of the meek Christian. Meditation is also a good way to trigger sleep in the insomniac.

• Resolve to read beyond the headlines. I once worked in a home for the elderly where most of the 90-year-old residents suffered from dementia and shortsightedness. They would sit with the newspaper on their laps declaring the beginning of World War Three, misinformed by a headline that had been captivatingly and sensationally written by the copy-editor, not the journalist.

• Resolve to give more. I don’t mean emptying out the piggy-bank for every door-knocker claiming to represent some sort of charity. But try giving a kind word, a smile, holding a door. And when time and energy suits, use your granite-countered kitchen to bake cookies for a charity event or give someone a lift in your SUV.

• Resolve to make lists of tasks you have accomplished, rather than to-do lists. There is nothing like the marked completion of a laborious task to generate feelings of success and self-love.

On that note, I’m going upstairs to give everyone a big morning hug (right after I reject the most recent request to be put on the Facebook auction block).