RETURN TO FRONT PAGE OF THIS ISSUE  |  JOHNSON INTERNSHIP WEB SITE

Johnson Internship Program

Dania Ermentrout, Intern

The anxious rush of the season of Advent was inevitable, but the only thing that eclipses it is the urgency to comply with our New Year's resolutions, especially, I might add, if they involved public goal setting. Psychologically speaking, a public promise is a guaranteed way to get anything done, considering that shame is always a reliable impetus for action. Yet, there is another force that inspires our early start and encourages our guilt.

Whether or not the economy is booming or slip-sliding on the downhill, we can be fairly certain that someone will faithfully set their lawn or representative sedentary object ablaze with color like an all night convenience store before Thanksgiving. And, while the rest of us are awaiting Groundhog's Day in mid-December, you can be sure that at least one lovesick someone has roses and chocolates on order 'just in case.' Just in case what? Groundhog's Day isn't going anywhere and, if it did, I doubt I would really mourn the loss -- same for Valentine's. Although, if that went down the tubes, obstetricians everywhere would be picketing.

I believe strongly that there is something to be said for those that hold out until the last minute. Truth be told, some of us are just plain procrastinators, but there are the rare few that haul the last sickly tree out of the lot on December 24. They celebrate the birth of the Christ child the twelve days after Christmas as opposed to the twelve weeks before. Yet, this speaks not of a relatively obscure and antiquated tradition but rather of a lifestyle that celebrates the present.

The question, though, is not how we can seize the day but instead how we can rejoice in what the day has brought. Seizing seems to imply our implicit need to control the time that we will never possess. And, in doing so, we build up our repertoire of activities and obligations because taking on a new commitment is part of seizing this day that we cannot control. Ironically, the more that we refresh and renew, the more we just overwhelm. It seems to me like 'refreshing and renewing' might be a more appropriate descriptor for a moisturizing crème than for a New Year's resolution.

I would like to humbly propose that we look at what we are already doing. Or, update your resumé and try to keep it to a page -- I dare you. Instead of rushing through Advent and Christmas like everything but a Duke football player and catapulting ourselves into the New Year, I suggest that we stop and pick things up that we have dropped along the way. You'll notice, undoubtedly, with a bemused smile, that we tend to take things on like a Brothers Grimm fairytale, picking up interests and avocations and dropping them in succession all the way to the quaint thatch hut in the center of the forest. Anyone we know could find us by the trail of our commitments lost and found.

So, before you get a head start on saddling yourself with a new set of burdens for the new calendar year, consider returning to the old ones. Return the video wedged under your couch. Return the e-mail that perpetually sits at the bottom of your inbox. In fact, why not just return to your old elementary school and roam around for the afternoon. Revisit the familiar and forgotten.

© 2002: Chapel of the Cross