Another
new year has come and I suppose many people were careful to make fine
resolutions for the occasion. I did not. It’s not that I think I have nothing
to improve, nor that I believe that I cannot improve. Past experience has taught
me that making resolutions at New Years to improve such and such almost never
works. What does work is continued effort on my part to change throughout the
year whether I have made a resolution or not. For example, I made a New Year’s
resolution when I was eight years old to stop biting my fingernails. I didn’t.
I made the same resolution when I was nine, and then ten.
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Then
one day in May when I was eleven I saw my reflection in a large mirror while
chewing on my nails and realized how odd I looked. I suppose about age eleven is
when we begin to worry more about what others think of our appearance. Whatever
the reason, I stopped biting my nails without much effort after that. It had
taken only firm motivation to change, not the three resolutions I had made. So,
the advice of the Dalai Lama will remain the only resolution I make for a long
time. He said, “Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon!” That I can
do.
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