Saturday, January 16, 2016

Hope Resolution

-Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering ‘it will be happier’
            -Alfred Lord Tennyson

            It seems I’ve started a habit of writing two blogs a week. One, strictly personal and will not be posted, the second, for you, my dear readers. This is one of the second blogs.
            It is now two weeks into the new year. Most people have made and broken their resolutions and are scurrying about their lives before the tick of the clock and the drop of a ball. Why? Cause change is hard. Resolutions are hard. Promises are hard. Living in habitual repetition is easy and comforting.
            I have tried over the years to make certain changes in my life. Take on resolutions and adhere to them. Some have been successful, some have not. Yet every year there is one resolution I always make and I try to adhere to. It’s a simple one really. “Be nicer, maintain your temper and try to be a more pleasant person to be around.”
            Now, I don’t always achieve this goal. I don’t always maintain my composure and to be truthful, I can be quite viscous at times. With my words and my actions, also, by nature I am a recluse. I like my alone time. I like not having to deal with people, make conversation and be pleasant to folks who just irritate me to no end.
            So every year I try to overcome these yearnings. It’s not easy. Hell, I don’t even enjoy family gatherings. Most of the time I end up in some secluded back yard, sitting under a tree, smoking a cigar and wondering how I got there and when can I leave.  I don’t care where I am, what I’m doing or who I’m around, I always have these thoughts. I wish I didn’t. I wish I could be like most people and just enjoy the moments of being surrounded by people who I’m related to or want to see me. I wish I had that desire to be as social as they are. But I don’t think no matter how much I wish for it, try and force it, make endless attempts to be there and in the moment… inside me there is an urge to just be alone, at home and not exerting my social graces beyond their limits.
            Yet every year I make the same resolution. I attempt to change my own personal dynamic and become a more social creature. Even though I know I will fail. Fail miserably. I don’t do good with crowds of people. I get nervous and I shut down. Simply because I know that the thoughts raging in my head are not to be spewed forth from my mouth. If I did allow the floodgates of words to open, I’d once again find myself alone because I had offended almost everyone in the room.
            Yet I try. Over and over again. Until, somewhere around July of each year, I finally give up. Six months of being pleasant and stepping out of my own hermit comfort zone reaches its limits and the futility of my resolution has to be faced.
            Although there is hope. With the passing of December into January that hope is reborn and once again I try to step out of my life and into the lives of others, which usually causes great stress in me and anger in the people I attempt to socialize with.
            Hope is a strange thing, it makes our minds warp our reality, it provides us comfort in strife, it calms us when the storms of life rage and give us a sense of control when we are reeling towards the abyss.
            As humans do we do this as a survival instinct. We have to or else we’d most likely go mad with depression. I mean, I have hope for change, as do you, as does your neighbors and , well, most of humanity on this planet and even some that are spending time off planet. It is a condition that makes us be better towards each other. Which is admirable. Because there are lots of creatures in this world, that when the chips are down, just give up. Humans don’t.
            We fight back, we try harder, we wield hope as a catalyst for change.
            Which I suppose is why every year  I have the same resolution.
            Because while I may be a curmudgeon at heart, I hope one day to change.

            Have a great week.

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