Resolve

Can we change or can’t we?  Sometimes I believe I’ve changed for the better, my usual goal.  It’s just then that I catch a glimpse of my old self and I feel the specter of immutability giggling at me through the looking glass.  I like to think change is possible.  For some people, metamorphosis may be the only path to freedom; freedom from an existing legacy, they are reluctant to leave behind.  I count myself among those who feel life has its length for the purpose of growth.  I want to be a bit better at the end than I am today.  Better at what?  All of it!

Each year I engage in the hopeful ritual of making new year’s resolutions.  They symbolize the hope of change.  Against all odds and history, I write down a few bits that I’d like to bring to fruition in the coming year, fold them up and seal them in an envelope bearing the calendar year scrawled in ink on the front.

I recently opened my “2018” envelope and found that my resolution success rate for the past year was a meager twenty percent.  A failing grade to say the least, though I suppose twenty is better than zero.  Perhaps I set my sights too high.  Or it could be that I’d merely forgotten my goals, as some of those I’d written came as a bit of a surprise when revisited.  At first, I thought I’d failed. Indeed by some standards, I have failed miserably.

However, if I were to achieve a twenty percent annual increase in an investment opportunity, I’d call that same percentage a smashing success.  Its all relative I suppose.  Getting somewhere is better than getting nowhere, if one is in the mood to get going at all, and I am.  So for the sake of momentum, I’ll choose to view the outcome of my 2018 resolutions from an investor’s point of view.

This year I will again take out the paper and pen, pour a cup of coffee and sit by the desperately dry and brittle Christmas tree.  The cold winter light will spill in across the weathered wooden sashes of the living room windows and cross my page.  Then and there I will again challenge the concept of immutability.  Goals will be set that may not if history is any indication, be reached.  I will laugh in the face of past failure on the eve of a new year.  Once again, without any reason for confidence in the matter, I will choose to find resolve.