5 Spiritual New Year’s Resolutions
'Increase your kindness'
The best resolutions are elastic—they
cannot be broken with a single act. If you swear never to touch red
meat, one burger ruins the resolution. If, on the other hand, you pledge
to eat healthier food, each day you have a chance to fulfill the
resolution anew. Below are five elastic spiritual resolutions that can
carry you throughout the year.
1. Engage with people more than pixels.
Looking at a phone is quick and
undemanding. Texting is easier than talking—it gives you intimacy
without danger. This year, resolve to spend more time looking into
someone’s eyes when you communicate with them. Replace an extended
exchange on text with a meeting for coffee. Make a promise of presence.
It is easy to pretend that what we watch
and how we speak have no effects on us. But the constant pounding of
hatreds and dehumanization that marks so much of our media have
consequences for our character. Part of who you are is the sum of the
influences you choose: what you watch, who you associate with, how you
speak about others both publicly and privately. Life is a continuous
journey of soul shaping, and this year, resolve to keep your deep
journey in mind. Turn away from something seductive but
corrosive—Twitter rants full of bile, or people who continually insult
those around them, or depictions of violence that take savage delight in
suffering. You only get one soul; don’t squander it in things unworthy
of its majesty.
If you wish to feel kind, do something
good. The great secret of moral growth is that it often begins from the
outside. Rather than your joy leading you to smile, your smile can lead
you to joy. Behave generously even when you do not feel like it and the
habit will grow as will your innate quality of kindness. The act can be
small or large; it can be a charitable contribution or a gentle word or
help with a heavy bag on an airplane. Do it.
All of us have legitimate grievances in
our lives. Some people are very hard to forgive but you need not begin
with the toughest cases. Small acts of grace will grow. Forgive the guy
who cut you off in the street; after all, you have cut people off as
well, on purpose or inadvertently. Forgive the person who made an unkind
remark about you. Choose a place to begin. The more you forgive, the
less the world can injure you; forgiveness is a soft shield for your
soul.
Fight against perfectionism. Leave a
dropped stitch in the knitting of your life. There will always be more
possibilities to get something wrong than to get it right. Allow
yourself the latitude of mistakes, without self-punishing. God is
supposed to be perfect, not human beings. Have expectations of yourself,
but don’t enforce them with a hammer.
The New Year is coming. You have not
wasted a single day of the future. So here is your chance to live
purposefully. Will you achieve this every day? Of course not (see #5
above).
The key resolution is not to triumph or to always succeed.
Resolutions of the spirit come down to one thing: in this New Year,
grow.
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