Resolutions, Delusions, and Best Intentions
Heather: Welcome, everyone, to our annual New Year’s Resolution Salon. Item one: declare our lofty intentions. Item two: gently dismantle one another’s illusions.
Andrew: I reject the word illusions. My resolutions are bold acts of imagination.
Sofia: Andrew, last year your bold act of imagination was become a morning person. You abandoned it by January 3rd.
Andrew: I hadn’t recalled I made it all the way through the 2nd. Sometimes I even surprise myself with my unparalleled stick-to-it-iveness.
Lena: I’ve arrived prepared. I brought a notebook for my resolutions.
Heather: Is it empty?
Lena: Completely. But the blankness symbolizes potential.
Eli: Or avoidance. Freud would be proud.
Heather: Let’s begin before Lena’s stationery stages a cage match brawl between her id and superego. Andrew?
Andrew: Fine. My resolution is to regain control of my schedule. Last month, I accidentally agreed to two commitments at the same time, then panicked and tried to split the difference by attending both halfway.
Sofia: How does one halfway attend something?
Andrew: You appear briefly, wave to provide evidence of existence, and slip out before anyone asks you to contribute.
Lena: Your life sounds like a series of orchestrated escapes.
Andrew: Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment. The Houdini of bureaucracy.
Heather: My resolution is to finish writing the article I've been avoiding for over a year. At this point, it haunts me like a disappointed ancestor, shaming me for introducing intellectual laziness into our otherwise esteemed lineage.
Eli: Has it grown in your imagination? Mine always do. First, I don’t finish something, then it becomes mythic in its ability to torment me.
Heather: Yes. The longer I avoid it, the more convinced I become that it needs to be brilliant, which naturally makes avoidance the only rational path. It’s like I’m captive on an evil psychological treadmill that’s constantly accelerating, and with an off switch that doesn’t work.
Lena: All right, my turn. I want to get back into running. Not competitively. Not heroically. Just enough to feel like I have lungs instead of decorative interior organs.
Andrew: You’re all very ambitious. Meanwhile, I’m proud when I remember where I put my keys.
Sofia: Eli? You’ve been bracing yourself as though your resolution involves moving to a monastery.
Eli: Nothing quite so dramatic. Resolution one: stop narrating institutional emails in a tone of philosophical despair.
Heather: You do that?
Eli: Indeed, and with my usual flair for cheerlessness. Resolution two: finally revise the manuscript I’ve been tinkering with since, well, let’s just say several millennia ago.
Lena: Do you still like the manuscript?
Eli: I’m not sure ‘like’ applies. It’s more of a long-term love-hate relationship with differences we’re still negotiating. My editor is more therapist than editor.
Sofia: My resolution is to read more novels. I spend so much time listening to the news that passes as fiction that I sometimes forget what true fiction is like.
Heather: These all sound like we’re gearing up to become better-oiled versions of ourselves.
Andrew: Isn’t that the point? New year, new upgrades.
Sofia: But it’s always self-upgrades – running more, finishing things, organizing the abyss.
Lena: That’s because self-improvement can be tracked. You can chart miles, chapters, progress. It’s measurable.
Eli: But maybe measurable is overrated.
Andrew: Spoken like someone behind on measurable tasks.
Eli: Mockery duly noted and accepted.
Heather: Still, I’m struck by how all our resolutions are basically fix me, enhance me, optimize me. I’m guilty of it too.
Sofia: Everyone does it. You say resolution, the brain hears personal improvement, like something we should have been doing all along, but got sidetracked. Or we just fell back into our everyday patterns.
Lena: But what about resolutions that aren’t about our little versions of self-ambition?
Andrew: Like what? Be more patient? That’s not a resolution, that’s a personality change.
Eli: Actually, may I share something? And if it becomes too earnest, you all have permission to make fun of me.
Heather: Ahh, so now you’re becoming a co-conspirator in your own mockery. A fun turn of events.
Eli: Seriously, there’s something that’s been on my mind, something I haven’t been able to shake. A few weeks ago, I ran into an acquaintance from the neighborhood, David. He lives around the corner. We chat sometimes, usually about nothing in particular. But that day he looked, I don’t know, off. Like he’d been hollowed out a bit.
Sofia: What did you do?
Eli: I waved, smiled, said something like, “Great weather today,” and kept going because I was determined to be on time. Later, I heard his mom had been ill for months and he’d been caring for her around the clock.
Lena: Oh… Eli.
Eli: I know. It’s not like I was unkind. But I wasn’t paying attention. I was treating him like background scenery on my route. The thing is, I did catch that he looked kinda down, but it just didn’t register. That’s the thing, it didn’t register. It’s been weighing on me.
Andrew: That hits hard. Where were you headed that was occupying you so much?
Eli: That’s the whole point. I can’t even remember.
Andrew: But it seems you’ll remember not paying attention to David, and no doubt for a long time. I think I’ve done my share of that. Probably more than I care to admit.
Heather: We’re all guilty of it, that’s for sure. You get focused on one task, one purpose, and everything else becomes blurred, part of the background.
Sofia: And yet the moments that haunt us aren’t the unfinished projects. They’re the times we failed to see someone else clearly. Or fairly. Take politics. Like if I find out someone voted for a candidate I can’t stand, my spine immediately goes into full defensive porcupine mode. Suddenly, I can’t tell the difference between the person and their ballot. And let’s be honest, they’re probably looking at me like I personally designed the downfall of civilization. At that point, whatever chance we had at meaningful conversation files for early retirement.”
Eli: Yeah, politics is where our moral reasoning gets the most myopic. It’s become the most vicious launching point for stereotyping. Let’s face it, who isn’t guilty?
Lena: For sure, we reduce people to case studies we haven’t actually read.
Andrew: And once we start stuffing people into categories, it gets easier to miss what’s actually happening with them. Even the big things.
Sofia: Exactly. It’s amazing how often we’re wrong about what someone else is carrying.
Heather: Hmm. ’What someone else is carrying.’ How right you are. It reminds me of something I still think about. Last winter, there was a woman in my building, never says much. We nodded at each other in the elevator for years. One morning, I noticed she looked exhausted, like she hadn’t slept. I almost said nothing. I was late, distracted, already composing an email in my head. But I asked if she was okay.
Andrew: What did she say?
Heather: I still feel shock even thinking about it. She said her husband had died the week before. She had no other family. She hadn’t told anyone. We stood there while the elevator doors opened and closed twice. I didn’t say anything. I just listened. Later, I kept thinking, if I’d stayed silent, she would’ve carried that alone a little longer. And I would’ve never known.
Lena: So your resolution is to… what? Notice?
Eli: Yes. That’s it. Look up more. Ask questions. Recognize the people around me instead of assuming everyone is fine unless they announce otherwise.
Heather: That’s a restrained kind of resolution. No charts. No gold stars. No polishing of personal halos.
Andrew: No way to brag about it at parties.
Eli: Exactly.
Sofia: Maybe that’s the whole point. Resolutions don’t always need to be self-focused. The other-focused ones don’t come with applause.
Lena: But they can surely be harder. Being more patient demands… vulnerability. And humility. And effort. And especially time when you have none to spare. The world around us tells us to rush too much. Half the time, I can’t remember what I was rushing for.
Andrew: I guess it’s a question of patience and listening. Easy to say, a lot harder to do. Especially since most of us probably delude ourselves into believing we already do it. I know I do.
Heather: Still, maybe we should each try one resolution like that, something silent, about who we are.
Sofia: An invisible resolution.
Lena: More to the point, an off-the-record resolution.
Andrew: A resolution that refuses to be monetized or tracked by an app.
Eli: But is more fulfilling. And doesn’t come with fanfare. Something that leaves no evidence but changes things anyway.
Heather: I think that’s the safety mechanism. The best intentions are the ones that don’t get announced. The moment you broadcast them, they risk turning sanctimonious.
Sofia: Nothing erodes sincerity faster than narrating your own goodness. It’s like announcing a surprise party for yourself.
Andrew: Or issuing quarterly reports on your moral progress. “This year, I exceeded expectations in patience.”
Eli: Exactly. The second you expect credit, the gesture changes. It stops being care and starts being performance.
Lena: Which is why keeping it private might actually protect it.
Heather: All right then. One unrecorded resolution each. No speeches.
Andrew: Shall we toast to our invisible efforts?
Sofia: Briefly. Before it becomes a thing.
Lena: To the resolutions we won’t optimize.
Eli: Or monetize.
Heather: Agreed.
Lena: My notebook is still empty. Just as it should be.
