New Year’s resolutions? Not a chance. I gave them up 50 years ago.
Vince Hatt
The main reason was that New Year’s Day was never the emotional beginning of my new year. The emotional beginning of my new year was the first day of school until I was 26 years old. That was the time when I set goals about classes, sports, and activities. How fast did I want to run the mile? Was I going to try out for the school play? What grade point average was I shooting for?
Even when I stopped going to school, the pattern was set. The beginning of the fall school year continues to be the beginning of the new year for me.
New Year’s Day is not my emotional beginning of anything. It is the middle of winter. It is the end of the holiday season. I have tried to stay awake to watch the ball drop in Times Square, but, with little excitement, I fall asleep in the chair. The only excitement I feel on New Year’s is that I can watch football bowl games all day.
By setting goals and exercising will power, I did sometimes succeed to make incremental changes in my life. But this process did not work for transformational changes——changes that involve a fundamentally different attitude toward life and often includes facing addictive behavior.
An addiction is an attachment to any substance, process or attitude that causes harm for oneself or others. Some addictions to substances include alcohol, drugs, nicotine, and junk foods. Some process addictions include pornography, gambling, codependent relationships, shopping, compulsively checking social media and focusing intensely on accumulating money.
Attitude addictions begin with the stem “I will be OK, happy, or secure when….” The sentence is completed with such statements as “I can control others; I am special to someone; I am successful; I win; other people like me; I can avoid conflict; or I do things perfectly.”
If you think you have some addictions to substances, processes or attitudes, congratulations. This is a good awareness to have. And welcome to the human race. We all have them. A worse outcome is to believe that I do not have, or never had, an addiction. Such people are not in touch with their inner reality. Addictions are a response to feelings we do not want to face, and all of us have had feelings like these.
Two words of caution. Just because you like to shop, drink alcohol, or be successful, it does not mean you’re addicted. It is only an addiction if it causes harm to you or others. The problem is that it is easy to deny that there is any harm to you or others, when there really is.
Secondly, will power often does not work in overcoming addictions. Addictive people need to discover the limits of their ego-driven motives. They need an openness to God or a Higher Power. They need to be receptive to what Christians call grace. They need to become vulnerable in a safe place with others.
Ironically, it is often that having an addiction is the pathway to spiritual and human growth. Several years ago, Bill, who was dying of cancer, was in our small prayer group. Our group gathered around his bed as a priest anointed him. Bill said the greatest gift of his life was to be an alcoholic. Alcoholism was his pathway to surrender to God, and why he felt peaceful as he was dying.
If you can understand why Bill said this, you can understand this poem, “The Healing Time,” by Pesha Gertler.
Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say holy
If this poem makes sense to you, I suggest that you spend time with it until you own these words in the deepest part of you. This is not a time for resolutions. It is a time for healing.
Vince Hatt has been a spiritual director for over 40 years. He has a master’s degree in religious education from Catholic University and a master’s degree in theology from Aquinas Institute.
January 09, 2021 at 01:45PM
https://lacrossetribune.com/print-specific/columns/advice/vince-hatt-forget-new-years-resolutions/article_b0cf086f-5c3a-5a71-a9b6-7edb4a3992a9.html
Vince Hatt: Forget New Year's resolutions - La Crosse Tribune
https://news.google.com/search?q=forget&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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