How Are the Resolutions Holding Up?

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff

published by the StarTribune 

January 2, 1954

   I Am as much concerned with self-improvement as the next man--and have room for more of it than most, but I don't figure the road to attainment to be via the New Year's resolution.  I never kept one for more than a week and probably never shall.

   One Thanksgiving Day a few years back I told my wife that come the new year I was going to give up smoking.  She laughed heartily and I asked her why.  "Because," she said, "if you really intended to quit smoking--if you really wanted to--you'd quit now and not wait until Jan.1."

   She had something there.  She had, in fact, put her finger squarely on the fallacy of New Year's resolutions.  She had shown them for what they are--basically ridiculous.  For if you depend on the calendar to supply a disciplinary crutch, you don't honestly want to quit smoking or drinking or chasing women or picking your teeth in front of the company.  You are simply fanning the breeze..  The  whole  thing  is a gag and  might as  well be  recognized as such.

   SUPPOSE that yesterday you did resolve to quit smoking.  Until Jan 5 it may be easy.  You'll start wallowing in your new nobility and new appetite and tend to sneer at the poor wretches who continue to puff.

   Then you and Myrtle will get an innocent invitation over to Joe's for the evening.  Joe's wife will serve something to slake the thirst and right then you will be looking down the gun-barrel.  You'll recall the pleasure of puffing while you sip--like Joe is doing, the lucky, irresolute bum!  At that point, with temptation riding you whip and spur, you will be at the crossroads.

   But not for long.  Self-pity will set in and you'll be lost.  Why shouldn't' you enjoy a cigarette at a time like this?  Why deny yourself this crumb of pleasure just because of a crazy New Year's resolution?

   Then comes a happy thought.  You'll compromise.  You'll be a special-occasion smoker!  Comes then the death of your noble resolve.  You light up, telling yourself that this, of course, will be your only smoke of the evening.

   Then Joe's wife serves lunch, which provides another special occasion.  You hit Joe up for a second cigarette--to have with the coffee--and decide to ration yourself to four a day.  Next day you buy a pack. Even a light smoker can't go on bumming them forever.

   The four--a-day schedule lasts for some 30 hours, when you run out of cigarettes.  To avert repetition of such a disaster you buy a carton.  Soon the special occasions are running approximately 30 a day.  You are a smudge-pot again.

   I'VE JUST scanned a list of resolutions as compiled by a Gallup poll.  The favorite for the women is to "improve my character."  This one is held in high esteem by the men, also.  Beyond question it is a resolution noble in motive--and not much good.

   High character isn't something you can snap on like a light when people start yelling "Happy New Year!"  To get anywhere in this field you must work at it all the time.  A mere turn of the year won't make you a good boy for long.  If a fellow has been a bum all his life and postponed self-improvement until the dawn of '54, he's a good bet to turn bum again--and soon .

   A FELLOW I know, who limits his church attendance to Easter and Christmas, told me that with the new year he had resolved to go every Sunday.  If he'd started attending in September I might have thought he meant it.  Now I dismiss it as mere New Year guff--an idle resolution prompted merely by the fact that another year was starting.

   No more Jan. 1 resolutions for me.  I'll keep right on snarling at my wife and beating my little son.  I'll turn good when I have an honest urge to--and I won't clock myself by the calendar.  The honest urge probably will come when sonny is big enough to lick me.  

 Copyright 2014 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.