Happy 1-1-11

It's that time of year again. Only this time the date is 1/1/11.
And so we may get to thinking about resolutions.
We may listen to the resolutions of others, maybe try them on to fit.
Maybe we look in the mirror. Maybe we look at our wallets before we decide.
In years past we might look at or weight or other trivia.
But this is not years past. Not yet.
Now we look to our jobs because the world has changed. In my mind, the old rules don't apply.
Believe me, I know this is a dangerous philosophy. I know that man's greatest mistakes are based on forgetting that history repeats.
But even so.
Even so, there is something different, something essential has changed.
Maybe it's a blip. You might reassure yourself that a lot of what affects society is written. In no danger of being reversed.
I respectfully disagree.
The borders are open. The demographic is racing on the corner of its most dangerous exponential curve presenting change with the force of several Gs.
We are way, way beyond the point of no return.
Or maybe you are right. Maybe nothing has really changed. After all, people are people.

Anyway whether you choose to agree with me or choose to be wrong, what you going to do about it? What do you change as we enter potentially painful years?
Perhaps you look to celebrity to be your rock, perhaps you look in the newspaper for their list of resolutions and choose to copy them.
It is the modern way. Emulating celebrity.
But I tend to concur with an editorial I read today that the nature of celebrity was permanently damaged during 2010. It "jumped the shark". Google it.
There can barely be a celebrity format that hasn't been rolled out. And there can certainly never have been in history a more one worthless bunch of characters who claim the moniker.
It's a Band-Aid for the masses that has value but only when it's aspirational. When it makes you want to join in and want to learn to oh, lets say, ballroom dance.
And the reason we shouldn't follow these charlies most of all. Well, they're not happy, are they? That's not news to you, is it?

Maybe you look to sport for your validation. Is there a sport that has not been corrupted if not by cheating then at the very least by vile agents, greedy inarticulate scumbags or a total lack of moral turpitude.
Are these people your heroes?
Do. You. Want. To. Be. Like. Them?
Slower. Louder. Repeat.

One of the answers to this problem is how we marry global relationships with parochial ones. There's been a feeling that long before the script of Shirley Valentine that people want to break out into the big wide world. Fine. But sometimes wide isn't easy. It is a crime to look at the script of Love Actually and to allow yourself to "live such a little life".
The answer is it has to suit your personality.
You can and should tweak your personality of course. Apart from anything else, that is true learning. And fun.
Playact being a better person and you might end up one by accident.
You'll be happiest when you're true to it. Not to play to its whims but to its core values.
I'm making a potentially fatal assumption here of course. That your core values are based on integrity.
But don't worry. I trust you. I am a truster.
You are my trustee. (Would you mind giving me a grant for a conservatory I am thinking of erecting?)

Those among us have tasted globality in business or maybe hols and that may be lead us to another answer: to consciously become more parochial, to aim for a littler life, to batten down the hatches and build up the walls.
Working on your walls and your hatches is not the worst resolution for 2011.
Feel free to leave as many escape routes as you think you'll need.

Or maybe what we need is a new kind of resolution with a harder edge, with a modernity (is that the noun you make out of modern?), maybe a more existential feel.
Let me offer you a starter for the year - wrrte a letter to anyone who moves you to tears this year.

And whatever route you choose.

The very best of luck.