Dean Poling: Are there secret resolutions?
Jan. 1—Usually two weeks into the New Year, people make that transition to lower-casing it to the "new year" and, soon, folks are just calling it "this year." At two weeks into a New Year, many of the lingering New Year's resolutions begin fading. Many resolutions will evaporate along with the morning dew by noon of Jan. 2. Right, when it's New Year's proper, there's plenty of talk of New Year's resolutions.
People talking about the same kind of resolutions every year: Lose weight, spend more time with family, be more productive, exercise more, eat better. Or a resolution may reflect a goal such as a better paying job, or travel, or some other desired accomplishment for the coming year. Most of these resolutions are the ones people discuss openly. They talk about them at work. They mention them to family.
They are the types of resolutions which are discussed as the most common resolutions which people make each New Year.
They are probably considered the most common because they are the resolutions most commonly discussed in public.
Ever wonder, though, how many resolutions are made which people just keep quiet because of the nature of the habit which said person wants to resolve? Imagine, for example, telling friends, family and co-workers, "My resolution for the New Year is to quit cussing like a sailor. You may not hear me cuss but when I'm driving down the road, I cuss at everybody whose driving drives me crazy. I let loose a torrent of profanity-laced expletives whenever I stub my toe or get irritated and think no one is within hearing radius. That's my resolution. I want to quit cussing."
You don't hear that resolution too often.
You don't hear people making resolutions to quit lying, or coveting their neighbors' wives, or picking their noses, or belching the alphabet, or eating the pages of the TV Guide, or no longer be a cheapskate, or lying about their age, or any number of bad habits and god-awful behavior.
People probably resolve to quit such things, but who's going to admit to any of these things as a New Year's resolution while hanging around the coffee-maker at work or the New Year's dinner with the whole family?
Well, no worries. In two weeks, those secret resolutions will fade, too, and folks can go back to being their cussing, lying, neighbor-coveting, nose-picking, alphabet-belching, TV Guide-eating, skinflint, age-falsifying selves.
Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.
