Do-It-Yourself Resolve

Happy New Year! There is so much trying to be done in 2010, a new hopeful decade. The gym was full of resolution-makers yesterday, those bound and determined to lose the weight gained over the indulgent holiday season. Carts at the grocery store were full of produce and whole grains. I imagine today, the first Monday back from the break, kids ensconced once again at school, offices and roadways back to full, there is a lot of pondering on what to do, how to do it better. So much opportunity for reward, for validation of such efforts. I am back to work in that way, loaded up with gold stars, just looking for a glimpse of efforts expended.

So far this morning, I have had interactions with a variety of people, many past gold-star receivers who might be due for a new star, people who are pushing forward on their respective missions. A friend who is spearheading efforts for a new excercise center is full of ideas, open to others' thoughts, about what to do to maximize the enormous space. There are so many ways to inspire children, to instill confidence in them that we ourselves wish we had, then and now. We can, any of us, do anything, it is just, mostly, mind over matter.

I quote often the Brooklyn-born twin who owns the appliance store with his brother on the corner. His homespun, heavily accented wisdom is always dead on. Most recently, when I wondered aloud if I needed to spend the $65 to have him clean out my vacuum cleaner, if I couldn't have just done it myself, he looked at me quizzically, confused.

"Well," he said, "yous can do anythin' yaself..."

I had laughed. "I suppose that's true," I said.

I have thought about that so many times since. Of course it is true, but we learn well how to offload those things we don't want to do ourselves, things that are too difficult to figure, that we figure it would be more efficient to eschew. That is what our service economy counts on. Consultants can charge big bucks simply to look at things we ourselves have already seen but don't want to face. We think maybe others might be able to create another reality, an easier way. I have worked for a lot of companies who pay consultants top dollar to tell them things only to ignore the information. As before they were told what was what, the things they already knew somewhere in their heart of hearts, they choose to continue going down the wrong path because staying the course is, of course, simpler.

I am resolved this year to quiet the external voices, stop looking for outside consultants for everything and trust my inner self as the Temperance-Reversed card that came up on my Facebook tarot today suggests, to trust that I can do far more than I sometimes care to admit. That admission, of course, means I might be forced to do things that are hard. Gold stars to everyone that takes the course of the coming year into their own hands, that decides to acknowledge what they know or what they could learn, and does it.