I am resolved!

It is now far enough through the year to be able to think about New Year Resolutions. One can assume that the common herd has made (and disregarded) the rules made at the woefully unfashionable period around the start of the year and it is now time for the more individualistic and fashionable to venture into the realms of Life Change.

I suppose that it would be more in keeping for a citizen of an ostensibly Christian country to utilize the festival of rebirth at Easter to affirm a new path in life. But I for one have never been fully convinced by the gnomic posturing that has accompanied the calculation of the date of Easter. I fear that much of our present confusion about the date for Easter may be traced to the deliberations of the Council at Nicaea. And we all know what that little committee led to. It really does put one in mind of the worst excesses of the French Revolution; but a French Revolution carried out by Sufis riding on the backs of Jains thinking Zoroastrian thoughts and mouthing tantric inanities. So Easter is out and Now is in.

Monday the 19th of February seems as good a time as any to resolve to resolve. Whatever that means.

In English essays which pretend to be of a factual nature, it should be a pen blocking procedure to start any essay with a opening like, “The Oxford English Dictionary defines “resolve” as . . . “ It is one of those clunking introductions that give you a very clear indication of what the rest of the essay is going to be like. And if the essay is written in light blue pen and you are marking it at night then you know that it is going to take the whole of your concentration to stop the words drifting into translucent nothingness beneath your sightless eyes. Or, alternatively you will feel the need to become a Super Hero Teacher wielding the red pen of truth and the literate way. But dictionaries have their uses.

I did wonder, in a casual sort of way, about the derivation of the word ‘resolution’ and lo and behold, it turns out to be a 14th century word derived directly or via French from the Latin resolvere to 'loosen up' and from solvere to 'loosen or dissolve'.

I do like the counter intuitive derivation which, ironically, seems to be the opposite of what the word has come to mean. However, I also like the idea that ‘resolve’ needs a dissolving of previously held concepts or perceptions; presumably to get back to a pristine state where the negative had been falsely added to a basic purity and the ‘resolution’ allows the superfluity to be excised and also allows a better life to proceed.

The idea of ‘loosening’ is also interesting which almost suggests that a ‘resolution’ is not an imposition, but rather an ordinary state which can be achieved by allowing the natural processes to take their true effect by a suppression of the more negative actions which bring the need for a resolution in the first place.

It follows, therefore, that resolutions should not be difficult because they should be actions which you want to complete anyway, elements that your essential personality should find naturally congenial.

All of this, of course, is pseudo intellectual justification and an attempt at bolstering my already fading resolution to effect changes in my behaviour – the hell with ‘dissolving’ and ‘loosening.’ What I find natural is the behaviour which calls forth the need for resolutions and any other interpretation is a wilful ignoring of self evident truth.

Years ago I made a conscious decision to be influenced in my everyday life by Jimmy Savile. Not everyone can say that, and indeed, not everyone would admit it! In 1971 Savile ‘starred’ in an advertising campaign to urge people to ‘clunk click every trip’ and ensure that they used their safety belts. I thought at the time that the campaign should have used a more ‘acceptable’ person that Jimmy Savile and I felt that the ‘face’ of the campaign should have been someone more ‘respectable.’ So, it was with a post modernist sense of fun that I decided that in spite of/because of Jimmy Savile being the personality I would be influenced by him and ensure that I wore my safety belt for each trip and I duly clunked and clicked.

And this brings me to my first resolution. As someone who clunked and clicked long before the wearing of seat belts was made compulsory I find that I now have to make a further logical adjustment to my precautionary driving skills.

If you live in urban area surrounded by numbers of commuters who all go to work at roughly the same time then you have to run the gauntlet of the equivalent of a motorised Scylla and Charybdis. As drivers leave the curb then, and only then do they decide to belt up, using both hands to secure themselves and leaving their cars to veer across the road at their own sweet will. A couple of male drivers attempting this complex multi tasking problem create a more perilous journey than ever Odysseus had to attempt.

I know that driving and putting on the belt simultaneously is stupid. I resolve not to do it any more.

And without the help of Jimmy!

Now say that I haven’t grown up!