New Year’s resolutions are overemphasized, but I’m not ready to give up on them entirely.  Every once in a while I or someone I know hits on a really good one and even finds a way to keep it for a year or longer.

I find that there are two kinds of resolutions: to stop doing something and to start doing something.  And they’re different.  There’s a difference between making a resolution to start exercising, and a resolution to stop eating cookies, just as there’s a difference between making a resolution to stop shouting at people and to start treating people with kindness.  There are reasons and purposes for both types of resolutions, but we do well to recognize the difference in intention and impact.

I’m inspired by a meditation the Rev. J. Donald Johnston offered for the New Year in 1970.

Hold no life so cheaply
that its struggles are ignored,
so cautiously
that its faults must be disguised,
so casually
it loses inner worth,
so hopelessly
it has no hidden possibilities.

In every new moment
each one has the birthright
to be what [they are],
to continue being what [they] must,
to become what [they] can
beginning always now.

If you need to stop doing something, this meditation is a good place to start.   For those of you who need to ‘take on’ something new, here’s the same meditation with just a few adjustments:

Hold every life so valuably
that its struggles are supported,
so tenderly
that its successes are celebrated,
so carefully
it feels its growing inner worth
so hopefully
it has all imaginable hidden possibilities.

In every new moment
each one has the birthright
to be what they are,
to continue being what they must,
to become what they can
beginning always now. 

Either way, let’s all try to take Rev. Johnston’s message to heart.  Deep within it is the invitation that our Unitarian Universalist faith asks us to hear every year.

In Faith,