From the President:
Reflections on New Year’s Resolutions

by Jennifer Little

Come January 1st each year most of us are looking at what we can improve, what we can change. What in our lives can be better? Are we disappointed with anything, anyone, any particular facet of what is so important to us? Are we happy?

The Babylonians started the tradition of new year’s resolutions some 4,000 years ago. They were made to the gods to gain favor. Interestingly, researchers have found that back then a popular resolution was to return borrowed farm equipment! The Babylonians also felt that to break these resolutions was bad luck, so you had to be careful determining what they were. The Romans refined the practice and started them in the month of January, named after the two-faced Roman god Janus, who could look forward and backward.

Now, as then, we make new year’s resolutions to change, adapt, or amend certain behaviors or things that we have in our life. Whether it is to eat better and work out, to achieve more professionally or to slow down and concentrate on family, we each approach this date with a desire to “follow through” on these goals in the upcoming year. But how many years do we recycle our resolutions? I don’t know about you, but I seem to have the same resolutions year after year. Is that because we never can truly change who we are? Are we supposed to?

Why do we have new year’s resolutions? I have these epiphanies, these desires to change the circumstances of my existence quite often. More than just once a year, I find myself wanting to do more or at least to do things differently. So what is it about the first of January that makes it come so clearly into focus? Why is it that everyone, regardless of where you are or what you are doing or how happy or sad you are, feels the pressure to make a resolution? Do we have an inherent desire to be a better person? If so, then why is it that so many people can forget about this feeling two weeks into the year?

Has society developed this as a way to remind us that we need to keep trying, to keep adjusting? I’m not exactly sure of the answer. What I can say is that no matter the date, no matter the place, that feeling always exists in me. Because of that feeling, an attitude I think we all have, we should at least pause to reflect about the year 2011 and who we are and what we can be.

Somebody once said that character is what you do when nobody but God is looking. That got me to thinking: the older we get the more we should realize that the things that really count in life are effort, service and character (especially with regard to the legal profession!).

Each of us, rich or poor, capable or incapable, has a sacred obligation on this earth: to do the best we can, and to make the land we live on, the land we live in, and the world we live with, a better place because we were here. Shouldn’t that be the Ultimate Resolution for all of us? And shouldn’t we at least try, and try again and again, to follow up on it?