My New Year’s Resolution

Every year I come up with a three-word New Year’s resolution. The year before last it was “accelerate through curves,” which I liked a lot because it sounded bold and fearless. Someone who rode motorcycles once told me that’s what you do with curves, counter-intuitive to the impulse to slow down. You slow down, apparently, and you will tip over.  So I liked that New Year’s resolution although I’m not sure I fulfilled it. Often, I am more about phrase-making than life-changing.

Last year’s resolution I made and forgot. I could find it if I scrolled through Facebook  but it seems to me that a resolution that requires hunting down is pretty lame.

The last few days, a new phrase has been driving by and waving at me often enough that I think it might be my New Year’s resolution. This is it: Keep showing up.

I’d expound on that but I don’t think I have to. People will get it. Everyone knows that every day, everywhere, we can opt in or opt out. Go or not. Walk or lie down. It’s more complex than that, both more obvious and more subtle. But at a certain time and age, showing up, in all its varied manifestations, becomes more of a choice than a reflex. I think I might be at that age so this New Year’s resolution is a good pick for me.

It resonates. Well, it certainly resonated today.