Resolution Lists

On the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, I can write about nothing but making resolutions.

Writing this post is a paltry fulfillment of my resolution back in July to post more posts in August. With this post, I meet that goal, except that I had intended around three times as many posts in August as in July. That would fall under "good intentions," which aren't quite my path to hell, but merit their own post, sometime down the road.

Elul is considered a time for resolutions in the way that the end of December brings out the list-writing-tendency. The Jewish New Year, Rosh HaShanah, is a time of introspection and renewal in a way that "ringing in the New Year" in Times Square doesn't quite capture. Productive reflection over the course of the days (yup, two of them) of Rosh HaShanah is rather difficult with no advance mulling.

Which brings me to my topic of making resolutions.

The frustrating challenge of making resolutions is that we often find ourselves re-making the same resolutions each time we resolve. We don't always (sic) live up to our own plans. So we repeat ourselves. The setting might change a bit, and the end goals shift (perhaps becoming more focused, sometimes less so). But we are ourselves. We progress, of course (we hope!). Nonetheless, while the things that challenge us initially may diminish in force over time, they continue to be our personal bane. If they didn't challenge us, we wouldn't need those darned resolutions anyway. We'd be working on something else, and making resolutions about that!

Those resolutions are often the substance of jokes: starting the diet, stopping smoking, avoiding procrastinating, being nicer to people, working more efficiently, etc. Bridget Jones' Diary presented the making of resolutions with comedic art.

I therefore would like to address a different kind of resolution (there's plenty of Elul left to return to the notion of fixing ourselves, after all). I recently stumbled upon what strikes me as a very fun website called Day Zero: Plan. Create. Motivate. Achieve. The premise of the website is to provoke its members (and anyone else who stumbles across it) to fulfill their dreams, including dreams they might not even realize they have, by making a list of 101 things to accomplish in 1001 days. They explain that 1001 days is several seasons in which to get organized to accomplish things (beyond a single year, for example). They also establish a standard that tasks must be specific and measurable. And in this age of social media, members share their lists, and benefit from the ideas of others. The twelve most popular goals (since I didn't gravitate to all of the top 10) are:

1.	Donate blood
2.	Write a letter to myself to open in 10 years
3.	Sleep under the stars
4.	Get a tattoo
5.	Leave an inspirational note inside a book for someone to find
6.	Kiss in the rain
7.	Don't complain about anything for a week
8.	Fall in love
9.	Answer the "50 Questions That Will Free Your Mind"
10.	Watch the sunrise and sunset in the same day
11.	Get a job
12.	Watch 26 movies I've never seen starting with each letter of the Alphabet

I recommend perusing the list of 101 most popular goals, here.

As for me, my list grows and grows. Some of the things on my list overlap with the other kind of resolution. But many are things I would like to do one day, some day. Not necessarily 101, and not necessarily in 1001 days. The goals are there nonetheless. Perhaps I shall begin by deciding to make better headway this year than last.

Quick: Breakfast

What should I have for breakfast? What should you?

My mother never asks this question. Long before I knew her (I believe), she began a routine of cottage cheese and toast, with jam and cinnamon, accompanied by coffee and a small glass of orange juice. If you ask her, she will tell you that she discovered it as a dieter's breakfast (before the addition of jam), and it was recommended by Weight Watchers (perhaps she'll correct in the comments below, if I have these details wrong). Over the years, the type of bread has varied (raisin bread, whole wheat, challah). The number of cups of coffee has varied (depending on the size of the cup, I believe). The orange juice may be from concentrate, or not. And the flavor of jam is unimportant (strawberry is the taste of choice, but grape or raspberry would do fine in a pinch, I'm sure). Mom, this "Quick Question" is not for you.

Yes, this is what it looks like. Sorry.

    .

Most of the rest of the world is more flexible, more variable, I believe.

A cup of coffee?
A bowl of cereal (with milk)?
A muffin?
Bagels and lox?
A hard-boiled egg?
A breakfast bar?
A banana?
Cottage cheese and chopped tomatoes and cucumbers?
Scrambled eggs and hash browns and a side of bacon, washed down with orange juice?
None at all?

Do you eat on the run? Do you eat in your car? Do you sit down to a large buffet (entailing a whole new set of choices!)?

As a kid, I ate cereal. Cheerios. Raisin Bran. Rice Krispies. Granola. The occasional Alphabits or Fruit Loops. Eggo waffles. Hot instant oatmeal in the winter (Maple & Brown Sugar was our favorite). Hot farina that my grandfather would cook up at 4:00 AM before he left for the office, when we visited. Big events were french toast or pancakes or rocky mountains (after we brought the concept home from camp breakfast cookouts - here's the recipe).

In high school, and for years thereafter, I ate no breakfast at all. At some point, I became diligent about ingesting that "most important meal of the day." I still nearly never eat when I first awaken, and sometimes I forget to eat until many hours later. But I'll eat something. Usually a breakfast bar or a yogurt or pita and peanut butter (yes) or cereal or a brioche (a Friday treat). Most often accompanied by some version of latte (except when I skip the food part altogether).

Different occasions call for different foods, of course. But how much attention do you pay to your breakfast?

Does what you eat in the morning make or break your day?

Going for the Gold

When do you decide to push yourself? When do you refrain?

Kerri Strug famously vaulted the U.S. Gymnastics Team to gold on an injured ankle. The story is the making of...well, the Olympics. Basically, for the vault event in Women's Gymnastics, the competitors have the option of vaulting twice. Unless one scores a perfect 10, it's nearly always worth the second attempt (and very few do - Mary Lou Retton managed it under extreme pressure in the 1984 Olympics (here), but you try it!). In 1996, Kerri Strug fell during her first vault. That's when she injured her ankle. Her score of 9.162 left the team gold in question, as one of the top Russian competitors Roza Galieva did not perform well enough in her final floor exercise to beat the "Magnificent 7," as the US Team came to be known, even without Kerri's second vault. But nobody knew that yet, and when her coach, Bela Karolyi, told her that they really needed her to nail her second vault, she did. I watched it live. You can watch it here. 9.712 clinched the gold medal for the American team, and though the injury prevented Kerri from completing the individual competition, her vault has gone down in history as one of the shining Olympic moments of grit and determination, not to mention spunk and poise (read the play-by-play drama here). I tear up thinking about it, and it's fifteen years later (well, I've always loved gymnastics).

 

But how far is too far?

Should Kerri Strug have been willing to vault through the pain? Well, she was eighteen, and this was, after all, the Olympics. None of her teammates was surprised that she took the challenge. But should Coach Karolyi have asked Kerri Strug to vault, knowing that she was injured? Some would fault him (some did fault him, though not Kerri) for pushing her too hard (to be fair, he didn't know how badly she was hurt). But those who fault him are not training for the kind of perseverance that Olympic excellence demands.

The tricky question is determining when to "go for gold," and when to accept the "B-" (so to speak). There is little better than excellence (!), and slackers in general need not apply, but outside of the Olympics, a balance is surely warranted. Constant striving is admirable, but the very effort of it takes a less than excellent toll. Kerri Strug made Olympic history, but she herself had to come to terms with her disappointment in not winning Individual All-Around Gold (she did).

Not an easy line to discern. More to think about another time.

Seasonal Sadness

I would like to claim that I haven't been posting much because of the sad season on the Jewish calender. The three weeks between the two fasts of the 17th day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz and the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av are a time of mourning for the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, ending the era of Jewish sovereignty 2,000 years ago. Creative endeavors, at least completing them, are discouraged, in recognition of the fact that creativity may well engender joy. If I had refrained from posting to this blog for that reason, I might be justified. I do enjoy crafting these posts, after all.

But I made no conscious decision to avoid posting during this time. To the contrary! Every day, I have decided that today, I will complete post X, plan post Y, and think about post Z. Instead, I...don't. No decision made. Simply inertia running the show, until I realize that the evening is over, and bedtime should be considered, and the blog posts deferred until tomorrow.

This planning for tomorrow has been the default a few too many days in a row (maybe a week!). I cannot know what tomorrow will actually bring, of course. And since tomorrow is indeed that second fast day, Tisha B'Av, the ninth of Av, the odds are slim that I will post again before the day of somber, mournful fasting is ended.

But the plan for the blog has not grown cold, and my decision to pursue this particular creativity is sharp still. Inertia does not conquer conscious decisions in the long run. Or, not as long as I remember the plan!

Stay tuned, please.

Bad Choices: Hateful Speech

Hate speech is objectively a bad choice.                         

But the rest of it - of all speech, really - is largely, if not entirely, in the ears of the beholder.

How to choose what to say, when to say, how to say....inevitably risks bad choices.

Personally, I hate foul language. I rarely use it and rarely like hearing it from others (a few notable exceptions come to mind, but they are exceptions because of who they are, and they don't overpower my norms). Others use foul language to fit into their environment, or because they think it's cool, or because they don't even notice "foul language" as distinct from all other language.

Personally, I'm in favor of speaking nicely to others. But sometimes, my "nicely" is another's irritant. For example, one friend hates to be wished "good luck" before a big event. Another friend would find the absence of those good luck wishes to be rude and insensitive. More than one friend count their friends according to who wishes them a "happy birthday," whereas others find true friendship among those who tacitly, subtly ignore the annual recognition of aging. And one friend has recently expressed discomfort with the common greeting, "hi." Who could know how to speak well to every different person, without lots and lots of communication from each and every holder of a set of preferences.

The best is when you are comfortable enough in conversation to not worry about speaking properly or nicely. I once found myself shopping for dinnerware, and in perfect agreement with my shopping buddy regarding what was "horrible." And then I suggested that now that we knew we were comfortable enough to speak so freely, we might do well to refrain from using the extreme language. After all, we might not always agree. Indeed, the next time (or the only subsequent time that matters) he expressed his view that something was horrible was after pushing me for my opinion of something rather private and precious. "Horrible" may have been his legitimate opinion, but I'm fairly certain that we would have been better off if, in his comfort to share his true perspective, he had been wise enough to rephrase, if only just that once.

Sometimes, people utter their views with extreme language. That approach is testimony to their passion, and fairly impressive and even enticing to one who has been trained to academic caution (couching every statement in hesitation, lest it be disproven down the road) - that would be me. The danger of expressing yourself with vehemence or effusiveness, however, is that people may well take you seriously, and you may indeed be "disproven down the road," or simply change your mind (with equivalent vehemence or effusiveness)- in which case, you are less likely to be taken seriously the next time around. For the kind of person who is extreme in his or her thinking and open enough to express that passion, not being taken seriously would surely be a prime insult.

How to say what to say when to say....In a sense, the very willingness to speak leads to risky choices.

Perhaps it is "better to remain silent and be thought a fool, then to open your mouth and remove all doubt" (taken from Proverbs: "Even a fool, when he holds his peace, is thought wise; he who seals his lips is considered a person of understanding" (17:28).

But the benefits of positive communication are truly tempting, even with the pitfalls of saying the wrong thing.