Note: This blog is part of our new series called "From the Pantry" which will take a historical look at the food we eat and the culture around food.
By: Liz Williams, Southern Food and Beverage Museum Date: 1/9/12
It is the time of year for new beginnings. We seem to be prodded each year at this time to make resolutions for an improved life. There are lots of cultural underpinnings for this time of reflection on the past and a look to the future. And sharing our resolutions with each other is certainly one of the ways that we can make sure that we keep them.
Keeping them is always the problem. How often have we resolved to join a gym and actually go there, give up dessert, or stop overspending? And we seem to decide to totally overhaul our lives after the excesses of the holidays. Many of our resolutions are tinged with guilt, especially for the excesses of the end of the year, instead of a real desire for self-improvement. The time after New Year’s Day just allows us to get back to normal, not always improve.
I live in New Orleans, so January 1 does not mean the end of holidays. January 6 is the first day of the Mardi Gras season making abstemious resolutions out of the question. I cannot embrace beginning of the year restriction. It isn’t realistic. Thus I have taken to rewarding myself for good conduct in small increments, instead of making myself look ahead to a miserable year of life full of the privations of an ill-conceived resolution. I also like to make the resolutions specific, so that I can be accountable to myself. Specificity also keeps me from being too lofty.
I am also wary of resolution failure and the guilt and disappointment that failure brings with it. (I do not want to set myself up to punish myself.) Sometimes our resolutions are so grandiose and hard to achieve that I can only expect that we cannot remain steadfast for an entire month or an entire year, let alone for a lifetime. This all makes me a proponent at the New Year of realistic goals, modest resolutions, and feelings of success. I can build on the successes next year.
Here are my resolutions:
· Consciously do something nice for someone every day (this make me happy and makes others happy, it also makes me think about others and not only about me.)
· Remember that eating is fun. It can be an adventure. (But I am not starving, so eating too much isn’t necessary.)
· Remember that eating doesn’t solve other problems.
· Forgive myself if I eat too much. Don’t eat more.
· Forgive myself if I fail in another way.
· Try to find ways to walk 10,000 steps a day. Park far from my destination. Just walk there. Take the stairs. Carry things. Put things on the top shelf. Use the bottom shelf. Pace while I talk on the phone. You get the idea.
· Be sure to have family meals when I can – maybe breakfast. Maybe Sunday brunch. Just do it.
· Teach a younger family member a special family recipe with the family history.
· Don’t eat in the car. If I buy take out, I can put it in the trunk.
My resolutions won’t make earth shattering changes in my life, but I think that I can maintain them. And, of course, I have included the resolution to forgive myself, if I do not. And notice that my goals don’t even mention the spend less, save more type resolutions or the be-a-better-time-manager group of resolutions. And the intellectual self-improvement category is also empty – read a book a week or plow through all of the Great Books series. I guess we all focus on our interests, even in self-improvement.
Finally I wish to encourage myself to make changes and adopt new ideas for improvement as they come along instead of trying to overload myself all at once. I don’t want to have to carry around a card with a list of my resolutions, because I can’t remember them all. I want 2012 to be a good year for all of us. Not only do I want to be improved, I want to be happy being improved.
Happy New Year to you and yours. Great success in your resolutions.