RESOLUTIONS ANYONE?
From Memory to Anticipation
In my adult experience, Christmas is a time of memories. Of Christmases “just like the ones I used to know” and “with every Christmas card I write.” Of times when I was a child, counting the days until Santa came. Of starting a new tradition going out for sushi on Christmas Eve when we hosted a Japanese professor one December. Of wrapping gifts — or assembling toys! — until well after midnight when I had children of my own. Of loading the car with children and gifts “to Grandmother’s house we go” for Christmas dinner.
When I was a local church pastor, it was not my job to create new worship traditions at Christmas but to follow — strictly — the ones that reached back into the congregation’s memories decades if not a century ago. Ruth drank so deeply from the chalice one Christmas Eve service I had to refill the cup. Tears spilled unashamedly from Denis’s eyes at the memory of his lost buddies in the Battle of the Bulge. My German congregation recessed out onto the steps in front of the church at midnight to sing Stille Nacht (Silent Night) auf Deutsch.
What is your experience? Perhaps you could try an experiment: ask people of varying ages about Christmas and record their answers as Memory or Anticipation. At what age does the anticipation of Christmas change over to memories of earlier Christmases.
New Year’s, on the other hand, to me, is a time of anticipation. Not of the day itself — although I’m a huge Rose Bowl Parade aficionado and love watching the flowered floats make their way through downtown Pasadena — but of what the new year is poised to bring… and what I resolve to do do or to become. Okay, okay. What I hope to do or become in the 364 days that follow.
Better grades? Better job? Stronger (thinner!) body? Travel to some distant locale? Write a book (ha)? Organize my photos into albums by date, location, and subjects (HA!)?
New Year’s can sort of be like the white canvas of an artist. The blank page (or screen) of a writer. A brand new, pristine “planner” book. What is it that I am going to do with this new batch of time that’s just been given to me?
The Roman god Janus, after whom January is named, is portrayed as looking both backward and forward. The difficulty of looking back is that memory can be selective and faulty. It can take years, generations even, for an event to cure (in the sense that a slurry of concrete takes time to cure before it becomes solid). And the difficulty with looking forward is that one is, naturally, hopelessly locked in the present. We can anticipate, we can resolve, and we can plan, but the future will happen on its own.
Nevertheless, we try. We learn from our mistakes, or better, from the mistakes of others, because we want to be better or have it better in the future. And so we resolve.
In probability and statistics, models created to peer into the future always contain an epsilon or error factor. Gross Domestic Product will grow by X%, plus or minus an error factor. Interest rates will fall by Y%, plus or minus an error factor.
Life has error factors. More than three thousand people died prematurely on September 11, 2001 when terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center towers. Millions got sick a couple of years ago when a new virus evolved and spread nearly unchecked across the world. My family grew from two children to four in one night when a teenager drank a six-pack of beer and went for a midnight drive on an icy road which ended with his killing five people. Each of these is an example of an epsilon, an error factor in the lives of people who went about their daily activities with little thought that there was a probability of some number with a decimal and a bunch of zeroes in front that this was to be their last day alive.
These are examples of transformative experiences brought on by trauma. Transformative experiences can also result from changes in relationships, or due to sensory or physical changes, as well as societal, intellectual, and ideological experiences. L.A. Paul (Yale University) author of “Transformative Experience” has written extensively on how such experiences can result in profound changes, each having the possibility of broadening (or blowing up!) one’s perspectives and priorities.
Transformative experiences other than those that are traumatic I would term as intentional, meaning that one is seeking or has chosen to pursue such an experience… or, dare I say, has resolved to pursue it. Getting married. Having surgery to correct a health issue. Going to the gym (regularly, mind you!). Pursuing a degree or certification or taking a class. Joining a group that is politically, religiously, or community-minded.
Dr. Paul writes that these experiences can “change not only what we know but also who we are” in such a way “that our preferences, values, and self-conception are fundamentally altered” (Alice Gregory, The New Yorker, December 9, 2024, p. 13).
So, allow me to offer a modest suggestion: prior to making a resolution for this new year (anticipation), look back to this time last year (memory), and ask yourself: “What just happened?” What were your experiences? Did you go deep into an experience (start a graduate school program?) or just attend a couple of meetings on some issue and then drift away? Were you visited by some sort of traumatic loss? Ask yourself: How are you different from a year ago? Are you fundamentally different in some way? Or, to put it cruelly, just a year older?
Use the wisdom gained from this exercise to evaluate the path you’ve been on to get to where you are. Where do you want to be this time next year. And how might you get there, perhaps taking a different track (Experiences? Commitment?), from the year just ended.
Best wishes to you readers as you resolve to do or be whatever in this new year. Just beware of those epsilons.
