What resolution means in 2022

I’m late with my new year’s resolutions this year, already falling behind just a few weeks in. Hopefully, you’re still on-track with yours and haven’t thrown in the towel yet – less TV, perhaps, eating better, going to the gym more. Keep going!

I’ve been feeling different about resolutions lately. I think this is because the years of the pandemic are not normal years. They are long and they are tough. Who doesn’t have a friend or family member who’s gotten sick or even, sadly, that they’ve lost? Who doesn’t know someone who’s been laid off or whose business has been hurt or even shuttered during COVID? When Omicron began to spike, who didn’t feel their stomach sinking, imagining another winter of hunkering down and plans cancelled or deferred?

Besides the coronavirus and all its disruptions, the other news of the world weighs heavily too, with continuing deep division in our country, climate change-related disasters, hate crimes and gun violence, the future of American democracy uncertain. Many, including me, have pulled back on social media and even social interaction in general out of fatigue. Who doesn’t feel aged five or ten years by the past two?

So I’ve been thinking more about what “resolution” really means. Rather than going the usual route and coming up with a handful of personal goals for the upcoming year, it struck me that the actual definition of the word might help shape our resolutions, particularly this year.

Webster says one definition is “firmness of purpose: determination.” Boy, do we need this now. We need to hang in there, to steel ourselves to the reality that COVID will not, “like a miracle,” simply “disappear,” that it will be with us for some time to come. But learning to live with COVID doesn’t mean not caring anymore, throwing up our hands and surrendering caution and responsibility in how we handle it. On the contrary, it means using the tools we have to fight it with even more discipline, intelligence, and compassion for our neighbors. That means: get vaccinated and boosted; follow CDC guidelines on masking when you’re out and about in stores and other public places or gathering with friends; stay home if you’re not feeling well.

We also need firmness of purpose and determination when it comes to saving our democracy. A year ago, our Capitol was violently attacked by a mob of insurrectionists spurred-on by the former president and based on the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen. All patriotic Americans, including initially Republican leaders and most regular Republican folks, were horrified at this extreme and traitorous act, which destroyed our sacred democratic tradition of the peaceful transfer of power. At that time, most Republicans believed, in accordance with all the evidence from election officials of both parties, that Joe Biden had indeed clearly won the election. Over sixty unsuccessful lawsuits by the former president confirmed this. But after a year of watching Fox News and other ideologically driven media outlets relentlessly repeat the Big Lie, now a large majority of Republicans believe it. (That sounds to me like the definition of “brainwashing.”)

It’s still a lie. And we must all resolve, as citizens, to just as relentlessly base our thinking and decisions on facts and evidence, and to demand that our leaders and our news sources, above all, tell us the truth, even if it’s not necessarily what we want to hear or in line with our beliefs.

Another meaning of resolution is “the action of solving a problem, dispute, or contentious matter.” We could certainly use a bit of this, too. With people fighting over basic facts and science, over what they saw with their own eyes on January 6, 2021, over something as simple and fundamental as ensuring every citizen’s right and access to the vote, it can seem like the USA is one big blob of “contentious matter.” What can we do to help resolve this?

It’s widely known that when you’re feeling down and anxious, by consciously focusing on what you’re grateful for you can shift your mood and start to see things in a different, more positive light. (Try it; it works.) Similarly, in our day-to-day interactions with fellow citizens, consciously searching for and focusing on what we have in common can be a basis for making things better and moving toward resolution, even if slow or halting. To me, agreeing on basic facts seems like the obvious baseline here. There can be no chance of progress – whether in Wakefield or Wichita or anywhere in the world – unless we can all acknowledge a shared reality.

Finally, there’s a musically-oriented definition of resolution that has special resonance now: “the passing of a discord into a concord during the course of changing harmony”; or “the move of a note or chord from dissonance (an unstable sound) to a consonance (a more final or stable sounding one).” Think of the end of the Beatles song “A Day in the Life” with its dramatic final chord, or the end of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Or think of Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald returning to the familiar melody after a raucous trumpet solo and some crazy scat singing. I like this idea of resolution because it affirms that there can be tension and dissonance – indeed, music would be bland and boring without this – but contained within a larger song.

Can America be one song? Can all our differences and dissonance be contained within one unifying story? E pluribus unum? Lately it’s easy to think not. But many of us remember when such unity seemed much more possible – and it is still possible. Whether we move forward together, or descend into complete cacophony and discord, is up to us and, importantly, up to our leaders. America has got to be more about “we are all in this together and we need to help each other” than “I’ve got mine and to heck with everyone else.”

Let’s resolve to move forward in 2022 with determination to get through COVID and to help others get through, with firmness of purpose in saving our democracy, with a relentless focus on facts and our shared reality, and with a belief that we can do all of this together, as Americans.

First published in the Wakefield Daily Item, January 19, 2022.

© Jeff Kehoe