Happy New Year, one and all! As is traditional at this time of year, I’ve been evaluating my day-to-day existence, checking it’s all still worth it and trying to identify new incentives for getting out of bed in the morning and squeezing a few fresh drops of meaning out of this oversized lemon called life.
This involves letting go of a few dreams. I’ve had to concede, for example, that last New Year’s campaign to make 2024 the year we all “Say Si to Sherry” was not a success. Maybe this year.
Instead, I’m beginning the year with a new goal: to remove the word ‘might’ from my vocabulary. I’m sick of hearing myself say it: “I might get my haircut.” “I might take up yoga.” “I might go to the supermarket.” It’s all a bit, well, mighty.
‘Might’, my friend, butters no parsnips. It’s merely a way of admitting that you can’t make a firm decision. Which is ironic, given the alternative meaning of ‘might’. You don’t associate the mighty with being ‘mighty’, do you? “And God said, ‘I might make the Heaven and the Earth.'” That’s not written. Anywhere.
How the mighty fall? Indecisively, that’s how!
So this year I intend to be a bit less ‘mighty’ and see if that makes me feel a bit more mighty. The thing to remember is that decisiveness and certainty are not necessarily the same thing. You can be decisive without being certain. In fact, that’s exactly what decisiveness is, isn’t it – the ability to make a decision when there is no certain outcome? If everything was certain we’d have no difficulty making decisions, would we? Or would we?
Certainty, I heard it said recently, is the enemy of tolerance. I like that. I’m not a religious man but I’m tired of science advocates who sneeringly cite the Big Bang theory as gospel, as if they were there! But before you think I’m venturing down some wacko, dinosaur-denying rabbit hole, let me reassure you I don’t think certainty is such a bad thing when it comes to going to the supermarket. There is no ‘might’ about that; either you’re going to go or you aren’t. And chances are you are, otherwise you’ll run out of food, so let’s just say, “I’m going to the supermarket,” and have done with it.
And now, in celebration of my new found decisiveness, I’m going to have a sherry. Care to join?
