As it’s around the end of the first month of the new year, it seems appropriate to revisit the matter of New Year’s resolutions. Why? Well, because I seem to recall having read more than once that most such resolutions fail to make it past the first month. So, how are yours faring?
The State of My Own Resolutions
I will admit, for my part, that after a weak initial surge my resolved behaviors and mindset have lapsed and retreated before the onslaught of established habit’s momentum and inertia. That and, I suppose, some interrupting life events and concerns. Regardless, that which I had resolved seems to have dissolved.
I am hence recently re-resolving my initial resolution, which was, by the way, simply to re-prioritize meditation and health. And that re-resolving lead me to ponder the nature of what was happening.
I had in fact lapsed in the specific things I had committed to, and lapsed very quickly. I have the sense that the typical failure within the first month of New Year’s resolutions is often framed in that way. A person resolves to do something, they manage it for a week or two, then it falls by the wayside, and the resolution is broken and ended. Yet in picking the resolution back up, it didn’t really feel like it had failed.
Maybe I had understood, even when making the resolution, that it would not be a simple change, immediate and consistent, but would likely be a process of lapsing and re-committing. And isn’t that realistic, and isn’t that how resolutions should be understood anyway?
The Meditative Process
It was reminding me of something else as well: The typical process of sitting and engaging in a simple mindfulness meditation, such as a mindfulness of breathing practice. You will know, if you’ve ever done this yourself, that although you resolve to maintain attention on the sensation of breathing throughout the time of the meditation, the mind will inevitably wander away from the breath. Most often, at least for many of us (myself included), it will begin attending to thoughts it generates, instead of the sensations of breathing. But this is understood to be part of the meditation.
The mind will wander away. Eventually you will notice this. You then gently but firmly bring attention back to the breath, and the process continues. In one sense, it is a kind of break and failure of the committed. In another sense, it is not a failure, provided one notices and recommits.
There is an underlying continuity of intention which persists through the lapse of attention, which amounts to a continuity of the resolution to attend to the breath. And yet that continuity also needs to be recreated through the renewal of the intention, the re-resolving of bring attention back and carrying on, despite the lapse, rather than giving up the practice or giving in to discouragement.
The Double Yes
I was also reminded of a certain theorist’s emphasis that any commitment always requires a second commitment. And a third, and a fourth, and so on. This is, by the way, the somewhat infamous thinker Jacques Derrida (if you’re ever looking for an easy read, look elsewhere, trust me). But I did like that point of his.
He called it the “yes, yes,” the double yes. An initial committing-to is only ever maintained by a second committing-to, and so on. And isn’t meditation just like this! Come to think of it, so is health, at least in the sense of looking after one’s health or committing to health.
Maybe resolutions are like this too. Maybe a resolution requires a second, re-resolving, and another, and another, and so on. And yes, maybe in some cases there can be no intervening lapse. But in other cases, lapses may simply be part of the natural process, provided the intention is re-committed to, rather than being given up. This creates a continuity of intention in the persistence of re-resolving, which at the same time is also a series of novel commitments or resolutions.
So let’s not think we’ve failed simply because a lapse has occurred and a recommitting is required. As Epictetus counseled his students, don’t resolve half-heartedly, but at the same time don’t give up if you lapse; always pick yourself up and get back to it, with renewed resolve.