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Start the new year with a clean slate, resolution or not
Growing up, New Year’s Resolutions
were more of a shopping list than a
manifesto of change.
“Buy 30 new books, get some
Jordache jeans, Reeboks, and some new
Duran Duran tapes” often made my list.
No one told me otherwise as my fami
ly wasn’t exactly big on making resolu
tions. This bothered me greatly. I
thought there should be great excitement
in making these yearly traditions.
“Why don’t you make any New Year’s
Resolutions?” I asked Granny once.
She grunted at me. “What for?”
“Don’t you want to change something
in the new year?”
She eyed me over her sewing for a
second. “I want to change lots of things
in the coming year, but me making a list
of it ain’t gonna make it happen.”
SUDIE CROUCH
Columnist
“But it’s fun.”
“You’ve got a weird idea of what’s
fun,” she stated. “Writing stuff out on a
piece of paper on January 1st ain’t fun
nor will it change anything. Whatever I
need to change, I just need to do it.”
I like lists though, always have. I like
the idea of planning things out and
thinking about what I am going to do
and then mulling over the options and
how I will execute it. My grandmother,
on the other hand, was more of a jump
King Crossword
ACROSS
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Suitor
Syne"
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"Phooey!"
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Air for a pair
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"How I Met
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Related
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Burn some
32
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5
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Rechargeable
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46
Atmosphere
battery
owl
47
It
34
Grow canines
6
Sacred
Romantic?"
36
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Chowed down
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Murgatroyd!"
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in and get it done kind of gal.
Mama wasn’t a big resolution maker
either.
“Don’t you want to quit smoking?” I
asked.
“No.”
She didn’t even have to think about it.
She didn’t want to quit so she wasn’t
making any pretenses of it.
But I sure wanted her to quit.
“Don’t you think it would be a good
New Year’s Resolution?” I’d question.
“Not really.”
I’d tell Granny I didn’t know why
Mama didn’t want to make this her goal
for the coming year.
“Because it needs to be something
she’d want to do or it ain’t gonna stick,”
Granny stated matter of factly.
“Why doesn’t she want to do it
though?” I wailed.
I worried — the smoking upset me.
Mama saw the Surgeon General’s warn
ings just like I did, but she didn’t seem
to pay any attention to what they said.
“Let me tell you something, old gal,”
Granny began. “People ain’t gonna
change something until they are good
and ready to. Don’t matter how bad you
want them to do it, if they don’t want to
do it, they ain’t going to. Leave her be.
You make her quit now when she
doesn’t want to, and she will start back
with a vengeance first chance she gets.”
Granny, to have only finished the third
grade of school, had a lot of wisdom in
her words.
People aren’t going to change until
they are ready. It doesn’t matter what we
want them to do, it falls on the person
and what they are ready to do. Until
then, we are just wasting our breath.
As I grew older and hopefully a little
wiser, I discovered how right Granny
was.
Change is a big undertaking.
January 1st isn’t going to make that
much of a difference in whether or not
someone will make those changes hap
pen.
In fact, a lot of people bail on those
resolutions by February — to the tune
of around 80 percent.
I was puzzled by that fact, wondering
how someone didn’t stick to their goals,
but then thought of my own resolutions
of years past.
It’s one thing to set the goal to buy a
pair of jeans versus stopping a habit
that’s been ingrained for decades.
Writing out our resolutions is sup
posed to help them stick but if over half
of them are discarded in a few weeks,
that evidently doesn’t work for most
people.
“You wanna know what’s wrong with
you?” Granny asked. “Y’all seem to
think that once the clock strikes 12 and
it becomes January everything is going
to suddenly be so much different. Like
that’s all you gotta do. Just wait til the
stroke of midnight and magically those
things happen. Everything is supposed
to be so different. It ain’t.”
She wasn’t far off as usual.
I think that may be the case for many
of us.
We get so focused on the hype of the
New Year and making those resolutions
that we just look at the date and don’t
think about what we need to do to see a
difference.
We think a new year is the clean slate
we need to reinvent ourselves or make
those needed changes, when the truth is,
we don’t need to wait for January 1.
But, like Granny said, it does need to
be something we are sincerely ready to
change.
There’s a lot of things I want to work
on in the coming year. Some of them, I
am writing down, and making a plan.
A few, I am starting on today.
Sudie Crouch is an award-winning humor
columnist residing in the North Georgia
Mountains among the bears, deer, and pos
sibly Sasquatch. You can connect with her
on Facebook at Mama Said: A Collection of
Wit, Humor, and Deep-Fried Wisdom. Her
recently published book, 'Mama Said: A
Collection of Wit, Wisdom, and Deep-Fried
Humor' is available in paperback and Kindle
download on Amazon.
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