Almost nothing good has come easily, except the most wonderful and mysterious gifts. Every inch of the way has been a struggle, and the extent of progression is not prodigious. But examining myself and my life with my most critical eye, I can honestly say that I never slacked off, and I always tried my hardest to do the right thing in every circumstance. I have never chosen something I believed was a neccessary evil. I have never admitted that there was any such thing as a neccessary evil. I have never compromised my principles. I have always been truthful to others and especially tried to be so toward myself. I have never hated anybody in my life and have never intended harm upon anyone. As for the gifts given me, I can unequivocally say that I did nothing to deserve them, especially my friends and my sisters and brothers. As for the enemies I have made, I can honestly look into my conscience and their wrath and maltreatment and say that I have done nothing to merit that in them either.
I have discerned that although the list of things that I want to change about myself or improve in myself seems to lengthen each year, although I don't believe I will ever feel quite at home in this life and this world, or will ever understand why I was placed here by God, or even concieved of, in His Mind, for that matter, I can go on living with the mystery. I can forgive myself for having lived this life, because it is not really a small life, although it looks that way, to skeptics. I have decided to stop being a skeptic.
I also admit that in my life, I have been unforgiving, hardhearted and acted solely out of anger to one person only, and that person was myself. While in previous years, I was tempted to consider this of little importance, (because it was only myself, after all, who was hurting) I have decided now that that was at the root of every mistake I have ever made and that if left unchecked it could subvert everything good that I wanted toward everything that I love and every goal for which I have worked. Ironically, I seem to be the only person in the world that I would not hug if he needed it. Osama Bin Laden, Larry Flynt, Hugh Hefner, Nancy Pelosi, Josef Stalin, Margaret Sanger, Vlad the Terrible, Genghis Khan, anyone else, just not me. It seems that in my own past esteem I am only person whose suffering merited indifference. I have now decided that this is not true, that no human being should be hated, not even myself.
So while my list of things I could resolve upon this year are seemingly endless (Get a better job, make more money, be able to afford a doctor and dentist visit, smile more, get more books, make more friends, slim down, get more organized, be more tenacious about what you want, grow in wisdom, sing in church again, pray with more order and consistency and fervor, get married, have kids, get a new hair-do, learn to sew, learn how to cook chicken cordon-bleu...) I have decided that the most important resolution of all, is the one that is the most difficult for me: to hope.
Because my hope has always been hampered by my inability to accept what I do not understand, my inability to forgive myself for my failings, and my lack of emotional conviction that God loves me or truly has a part for me in His plan that is important. Yet, this is precisely the most important thing to believe. It is the grace granted us in absolution in the sacrament of penance, in the mystical union with Christ in the Eucharist, in the miraculous gift of life itself. Hope is not a virtue that comes naturally for me (or for anyone for that matter). That is why it is called a theological, an infused, supernatural virtue.
So, this new resolution comes with the truth that this gift, this very resolution, must be prayed for, and accepted as yet another gift from God. The gift of hope in His goodness and His mery and His love, is my central and principle desire for myself this year. As with all other self-imposed commandments that mark each new year with every person, though one tends to think of it as something that one must hold oneself to by sheer will-power, we secretly know that what we call "resolutions" are actually prayers, for ourselves, to the God that gave us that will and that mind with which to say, "This year, I resolve..."
