2016 Resolutions in a 2017 World.

“Wanting approval is a kind of aggression.” -Allen Ginsberg

Normally, this is the time of the year when we’re, anxiously, taking stock of the past year, and making resolutions, some grandiose, some gross, for the New Year. But let’s face it: 2016 has not been a normal year. 2016 is the year that I predict that 60 years from—assuming that there’s some kind of Mad-Max-Beyond-Hot-Topic planet, still capable of sustaining life—high school kids will be studying our fear, loathing and small-handed government, miles below the earth, safely ensconced in the bunkers left over from the race wars, and eventually gutted by the feral cat wars, nudging their pet sexclones/BFF, “Jesus, Jerry5, can you believe this crap? What was wrong with those morons? And hey, did you finish all the armadillo milk? Your turn to go raiding in the Forbidden Zone. Bring the monkey; he’s got the assault rifle this week.”

So, if you’re still having a hard time wrapping your head around our new leader (*giggles*), if things seem too damn real...yeah, join the club.

And maybe, given our flammable atmosphere, one’s New Year’s Resolutions have the propensity to go a little haywire, and cause more harm than good. If you’re frustrated, exhausted, and general fearful of what the future holds, maybe this is a great time to resolve to throw out the script and do all those things you’ve kept in your heart, all those things that both stimulate and terrify you...what exactly do you have to lose?

I think many of us create resolutions as a way of manifesting some kind of higher order in an indifferent universe, but come on, with 2016, I think all bets are off. I can only imagine that end-of-the-world cults must be making money hand over subjugated fist, right about now. Fear is a helluva drug.

But the other side of every fear, as the cliche goes, is the ultimate freedom. (And yes, that’s also scary.) But spoiler alert: this is your life. The good parts and the bad. This is what we’ve got to work with.

“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”-Nelson Mandela.

I remember that day, as if it was yesterday. I had played hooky from high school to hang out with my boyfriend, and we watched the parade on TV, silent and awed by the magnitude of the history we were watching. Routinely we turned to each other, and sort of giggled, in utter shock: was this really happening?

This was probably the moment I became a history slut nerd. To see this man move through the streets, and to see the streets rise up to greet him, crying out in need, one could almost touch, though the TV, his empathy and hope.

Resolutions can be wonderful things, a way for us to commit to our passions and potential, a way for us to create a road-map of our ambition, and make order of the convoluted universe inside all of us. But sometimes, these same resolutions can become a form of self-inflicted punishment, for all the things we didn’t do. For all our fears. For all that we’re not. For simply being human, and all our necessary imperfections.

Don’t get it twisted: 2016 has been a brutal year. All of us—winners and losers—are walking wounded. All of us are lonely and bleeding. All of us are scarred.

If you’re considering a resolution-free New Year, a New Year in which you simply decide to get reacquainted with yourself, and by extension, your country...well, who could blame you? The deepest, truest part of yourself knows what you need. Will you listen to yourself? Will you trust yourself.

“I exist as I am, that is enough.” - Whitman

Perhaps forgiveness could be your first, and last, resolution for 2017.