I hate New Year’s resolutions.

Okay, okay.

I guess hate is a bit intense right after the holidays.

The truth is . . . I don’t hate the actual resolutions people often make at the beginning of a new year. It’s wonderfully exciting to look back and think ahead. To consider where you’ve been, what you’ve done, who you were. To plan adjustments that might make yourself and your life a better version of what it once was. I’m all for a little constructive reevaluation from time to time. I believe there can be a great deal of value in purposefully taking stock and deciding if the people and activities that have commanded our focus over a twelve month period have been worth our time and effort.

I make resolutions at the end of December like everyone else. In fact, I have a list that would make Atlas Shrugged seem short. (Just Google "longest novels ever written” if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) I want to improve. I want to be different in a myriad of ways. I want to eat less sugar and more spinach. I want to talk less and listen more. I want to buy less and save more. I want to complain less and celebrate more. I want to judge less and love more. I want to be a more enthusiastic parent, a more attentive wife, a more loving daughter, a more thoughtful friend. I want to be less impatient, less worried, less demanding, less of a perfectionist. I want to make changes in my life. I need to make changes in my life. So, like I said, I make New Year’s resolutions right along with the rest of you. I don’t hate the resolutions. I simply hate my inability to keep them.

I wonder . . . what if all this appraising of life we do at the end of each calendar year is completely futile because of its very nature, because it involves the act of contemplating the past and anticipating the future, because it causes us to immerse ourselves in what has already been and design what is yet to be –the two things we have absolutely no control over.

I wonder . . . what if we didn’t look back. What if we didn’t look ahead. What if we concentrated only on the present. Right now. This moment.

I guess some of those resolutions on our lists wouldn’t make much sense if we realized today could be our last. I mean really, if I knew I wasn’t waking up tomorrow morning I certainly wouldn’t spend forty-five minutes of today in a pouring sweat in my workout room and I would definitely be eating brownies for breakfast, cookies for lunch, and cake for dinner. Today’s line-up of snacks would involve French fries, chips and salsa, and several slices of pizza . . . IF I knew I wasn’t waking up tomorrow.

But, are those the kinds of resolutions we need to keep? Sure, it’s important to exercise and eat right, but aren’t those resolutions pretty low on the list of what really matters in our lives. It’s the big resolutions I’m thinking about here. The ones that have to do with how we spend the seconds of each day and how we treat the people we love.

If we viewed this day as our last, we would keep every truly important resolution we’ve ever made. If we could put all our energies into this day, think how we’d be able to transform our thoughts, words, and actions. I could be exactly who I want to be if I didn’t allow what has happened in the past or what might happen in the future to consume a single one of my thoughts. I would be so full of love and celebration and gratitude and joy if I could just consider this day to be the precious gift that it is.

I’ve crumpled up my list of New Year’s resolutions and thrown it in the trash. I don’t need a list to remind me what I want to do and who I want to be in 2012. I just need to remember one short sentence, seventeen simple words.

Psalm 118:24 This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Forget the past.

Ignore the future.

Focus on the present. The gift of today.

That’s all I have to do. It’s my one and only New Year’s resolution. I will probably fail at least three-hundred and sixty-five times, but this year, I will try to remember that each day could be my last. And I will live . . . and love . . . accordingly.

Now, pass me another brownie.:)