Broken Resolutions plus Miranda - such fun!

Pause For Thought with Dr Terry Biddington, Christian theologian and writer

As a schoolboy my English teacher would each January require us to write an essay about the New Year’s resolutions we had made. And whether, by that early point in the school term, we were still managing to keep them. I never worked out whether this requirement was a prurient desire on his part to learn about our private lives - or a simple check on our literary abilities. But the written results were, in my case at least, dire and distinctly unmemorable.

One year some boy in the class was bold enough to ask him about his own resolutions. And with pride he announced his intention to correct each and every spelling mistake that might come his way. We thought little more about this until, later that same term, we read in the local paper of his arrest while apparently correcting graffiti on a wall in the town centre.

Perhaps there is a lesson here for us all: beware what we resolve to do while under the influence of the Christmas festivities! Hopefully our own New Year’s resolutions won’t have such unfortunate consequences.

I have long ago given up thinking that I might wave a magic wand and change who and what I am; or that I could somehow invoke the Fates to improve my future prospects and happiness. But, be that as it may, I refuse to be either despairing or cynical about the difference that individuals can make in the world. For even though I know how weak my own will power sometimes is, I refuse to believe that –together– the human species doesn’t have the imaginative ability or collective will power to make a real difference to our global human family, if we resolve to.

Sure – it often feels like little or no improvement ever happens for those communities most in need, when we leave things to the resolve of our politicians, global organisations, and world leaders. But I, for one, believe that if ordinary people like ourselves could decide to pool our individual resolutions in a creative effort to solve some of the dilemmas facing our communities, nearby or far away, then that’d make for a very Happy New Year indeed!