WHAT IF I SAID you can change your life for the better, and that all you’ll need is a gazillion dollars, a whackload of planning, and years of back-breaking effort? “That’s not very helpful or surprising,” you’d say. Most of us have limited resources—not only money, but discipline and energy and time. Sure, it’s great to have one big goal for the year, but anything more than that and you’re courting disappointment.
Before the mass adoption of video home systems (VHS) in the early 1980s, the only place you’d see a movie was in the theatre, and the only time you’d see it was at the time of its release. Sure, you could go back to the theatre during the two weeks it was playing, and see it again and again. If the movie was unusually popular, it might be held over for as long as a month. Eventually the screening would end, and the movie would disappear into a black hole with no plan or expectation of a re-release. There was no option of renting or streaming. And since sequels (and prequels) have become commonplace only in the last couple of decades, chances are there would be no revisiting of the story, ever. You’d move on to the next movie, and your recollections would be the only thing you’d have.
THE OXFORD English Dictionary says that resolution comes from a Latin word, resolvĕre, meaning “to loosen or dissolve.” Its early appearances, in late Medieval England, refer to a state of dissolution or decay. So if today were December 30, 1389, I would already be well on my way to fulfilled resolutions! Also, I’d consistently be 625 years early for my appointments.
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