Resolutions for Life

There are several milestone points for me throughout the year, when I feel a need to reflect on the recent past and make resolutions for the future. These come up during specific months of the year: in December, as I contemplate the beginning of a new year; in July, around my birthday, and in September, at the beginning of the Jewish New Year.

Since I retired, I have been successful with some of my general resolutions, like taking more time to write, visiting cultural sites in NYC, and going to the gym more frequently.  But some of my specific plans are sometimes hard to keep. For example, as the end of the current year approached, starting in early December, I made resolutions for things to accomplish before the year ended. These included losing ten pounds, cleaning up the papers on my desk, and organizing my financial records. To help lose weight and become a svelter, healthier me for the new year, I planned to go to the gym three times each week, and take long walks on all other days. But once I passed the middle of December, and realized that I wasn’t meeting these goals, they became resolutions for the new year. I felt somewhat relieved, because I now had a whole new year in which to do them!

I have enjoyed my reflections at these milestone points. In looking back, they help me identify things I accomplished, and I can see the growth and maturation of my family members. In making plans for the future, they always bring optimisim for the coming year. When I was working and raising children, making specific plans was necessary to ensure that all my responsibilities and needs were met.  But I have concluded that at this time in my life, making specific resolutions serves little purpose. Many may never be completely fulfilled, and others have their own sine wave trajectories, going up and down throughout the years.

So what shall I do in the future at these milestone points? They seem to provide good opportunities for reflection. Rather than using them to make specific goals, or to modify behaviors that seem resistant, I now want to use them to plan new activities, experiences I have never had before. The time-worn resolutions I have made in the past few years can still be there in the background, and it is likely that headway can be made throughout the year. But rather than yet again try to better control things that have eluded me for so many years, I won’t make specific plans about these any longer. And I think that focusing on unfamiliar, novel experiences may even be good for my health.

The term neuroplasticity is defined as the brain’s capacity to form new connections. It has been shown that changes in the brain can happen throughout life, with new experiences and new learning contributing to increased neuroplasticity, slowing mental decline. So that’s it for me- seeking out and visiting new places, meeting new people and having new experiences, those will be my focus for plans made during my reflective milestone times.  

At the end of the current year some things happened that were new experiences for me. I was in a labor room and witnessed the birth of my newest grandchild, what an extraordinary experience to see her emerge into the world. It filled me with awe and pleasure. And after maintaining a blog with essays focused on humor and aging for four years, an anthology of selected essays was published – Not Done Yet: The Humor of Aging.  While I have authored many journal research articles throughout my professional career, this was the first publication of personal essays, and it gave me a sense of completion and fulfillment that was new to me. Both these experiences were unique and life-affirming. Perhaps neither will happen again, but there are other new experiences that I can create. On Christmas Day I decided I wanted to see some of the NYC holiday decorations. In prior years I had done so, but mainly as I passed by them on the way to some other activity. So I went to see the holiday windows at Macy’s and Saks, and walked around Rockefeller Center, looking at the tree, the skaters, and the golden Prometheus statue. I was alone, but not lonely, almost merging with the crowds enjoying the hopes and pleasure that these scenes evoked.  I believe that all these experiences likely increased my brain neuroplasticity.

It seems that I have made a resolution after all, to seek the new, the unfamiliar. But with endless possibilities and boundaries, I think this is a resolution for living that I can readily follow now, and one that will bring satisfaction and health benefits.