PACKET EDITORIAL, Jan. 2
By: Packet Editorial
The second day of a new year the day we sober up, both literally and figuratively, from all those well-meaning resolutions we made the day before is always a good time to take stock.
By now, it’s a pretty safe bet that most of us have already eaten twice as many carbs, lost our temper twice as many times, smoked twice as many cigarettes and exercised half as much as we resolved to do just a day ago.
We’re also back in the office, or in the classroom, after a week’s vacation. (Even those who didn’t take the past week off have to admit that the weekdays between Christmas and New Year’s Day amount to an extended holiday, more often devoted to sharing leftover cookies and showing off new sweaters and ties than doing anything remotely productive at work.)
So now it’s back to the real world a place where the magic of the holidays, and the resolutions they inspire, tend to fade quickly from memory. But before they disappear entirely, the second day of 2007 might be an appropriate occasion to reflect one last time on our New Year’s resolutions not so much on what we resolved to do but why.
It doesn’t really matter whether we vowed to lose weight, stop smoking, run a mile every day, learn a foreign language, volunteer for a good cause or win the Nobel Peace Prize in the year ahead. What matters is that there’s something within us that is driving us to do better to improve ourselves, our neighborhoods, our communities, our world.
And that spirit should remain alive in all of us long after the holiday season has ended.
The commitment to self-improvement is often the only one that survives the transition back to reality after the new year begins. Exercise gyms and wellness centers do a booming business year-round. The streets and sidewalks abound with serious walkers, joggers and bicyclists of all shapes and sizes. The proliferation of health-food stores not to mention the plethora of organic products now available in supermarkets attests to our collective desire to improve our eating habits.
But the commitment to improve our civic life is more transitory. Many nonprofit organizations delivering social services ranging from health care to food to housing are in desperate need of volunteers. Municipal boards and commissions can’t find enough interested citizens to fill all the available positions. In some towns, it’s hard to find residents willing to run for much less serve on the governing body or school board.
This retreat from civic life has been a steady trend for the past half-century. In the post-World War II years, it was blamed on the automobile, which allowed us to come and go when and where we pleased, and do so all by ourselves. Later, television was the culprit, taking the place of family conversation and communal entertainment. More recently, the computer has enabled us to do just about everything pick up a newspaper, get a book from the library, write and mail a letter, pay a bill, listen to music, conduct research, watch a movie, shop all in blissful solitude.
We don’t expect to see a reversal in this trend any time soon. But we do hope the spirit that inspired us to make our New Year’s resolutions even the ones we knew we wouldn’t keep will remain in our thoughts and our hearts throughout 2007. If we all resolve to make not just our own lives but the lives of those around us just a little bit better, they will be.