New Year’s resolutions have been around since Babylonian times, when they were used mainly for settling old debts. Today, they’re usually fresh starts calculated to avoid mistakes made or those narrowly missed during the prior year.
Resolutions need honest reflection on life — looking at where our life is now and where we would reasonably prefer it to be. Meditation and/or prayer are important tools to finding the best paths toward those goals.
Many of us feel our lives are already out of control and that we are far too busy to find this calm time. Perhaps life is too short not to take the time to be still.
Mindful living, according to Buddhist philosophy, is simply being calmly aware, instead of living as if you’re on a runaway train. Being fully alive and “living in the now” beats racing through work to get it done so you can get onto what ever is next.
Professor of Mindfulness Meditation Jon Kabat-Zinn, from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, writes, “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”
What about political resolutions? No, I don’t mean setting our own resolutions for President Obama or Congress — unfortunately that would never work. An example of political resolutions might be setting a goal to be more active in the local community. Another example might be learning more about the politics that directly affect your everyday life.
Many people can’t help but detest politics and say they want nothing to do with it. Like it or not, however, each of us (and each of our family members) are directly affected by politics. If no one wants to get involved enough to figure out what our politicians are doing, then the only possible outcome would be disastrous — which, by the way, is where we’re at currently.
Our congressional political parties make most Americans crazy because they have quite literally become insane — except to those playing the political games. Politicians know what the rules of the games are, but prefer voters remain clueless.
What is happening isn’t necessarily our fault, but it is now our responsibility.
Let’s not forget that we are talking about our own elected representatives. We pay their salaries with our tax dollars. If we don’t monitor their performance, who else is going to do the job?
Issues today are incredibly complex; there are no longer any black and white answers. We now need to discover more and better venues for learning from non-politicians. Besides editorials and op-eds, a couple of places to try might be TED Talks and Big Think videos online. (Remember, if you don’t have an Internet connection at home, the library does.)
We also need to develop level playing fields for discussing, debating and promoting our ideas on issues once we’ve done our research on them. Here’s some information to consider from a recent New York Times editorial. “One in three Americans — 100 million people — is either poor or perilously close to it.” More than 49 million Americans are below the poverty line and 51 million are near poor.
Additionally, “over half of the near poor in the new tally actually fell into that group from higher income levels as their resources were sapped by medical expenses, taxes, work-related costs and other unavoidable outlays … The poor do without and the near poor, at best, live from paycheck to paycheck. Most Americans don’t know what that is like, but unless the nation reverses direction, more are going to find out.”
It’s time to get involved. It’s time for “we the people” to start guiding our country in a more advantageous direction for all Americans.Tell us what you think about American politics.
Comments are welcome at marylin.olds@gmail.com.
