Resolved

Over the past week, there have been the usual reports concerning the time-honored practice of making "New Year's Resolutions". Mostly the reports covered the same, old ground, asking questions like, "What are the most common resolutions?"; "How does one go about keeping the resolutions one makes?"; "Why do so many resolutions wind up, forgotten, before February 1, only to be re-resolved at the end of the year?"

As I listened to and read some of the answers to the questions in those various reports, I thought of my own attempts at resolutions over the past several decades. What I learned from the process was unsettling. I discovered that I'm better at keeping up with commitments made to my "outside life" (job, family, friends, organizations) than to my "inside" one (spiritual practices, appropriate physical habits, life goals and dreams for the future).

My life is too easily taken over by my calendar -- particularly when I forget that I'm in the enviable position of being able to make many decisions about what and how much stuff gets put on it in a give day. I can give away too much of my life to activities, which over time, don't lead me to any particular destination, but rather take me farther away from the places (literally and metaphorically) I would like to be. I began to wonder, "Am I the only person with this challenge?" I don't think so. Or at least I hope not!

Then, I went back to the dictionary to rediscover the definition of the verb "resolve". The first definition was the one I knew, "to come to a definite or earnest decision about." But as I read further down the list, I discovered how the word is defined in the musical world, "to cause to progress from dissonance to consonance." Hmmm...

I wonder if the latter definition is the real driver behind our resolution-making sprees at the beginning of each new year. We feel the dissonance in some aspect of our lives -- too much weight and the tiredness it brings; a thinness of money and the anxiety it creates; an emptiness of soul and dissatisfaction of feeling disconnected from the Divine. We decide we need to do something about it.

We want the dissonance resolved into consonance. We want congruence. We want the discomfort to go away. We want to feel better about ourselves or our relationships or our careers. But we don't want to wait for even a metaphorical measure or two. We want the dissonance resolved, and resolved NOW!

I'm not much of a musician, but I can appreciate the beauty of a well-tuned instrument and the harmony of blended voices. I have experienced the physical sensation of interior stillness in a well-timed "resolve" at the end of a moving piece of symphonic music. I am awed by the brilliance of the composer who set up the dissonance in the first place. I understand the drama dissonance creates in the music, and the blandness that would ensue if there was no dissonance to resolve.

I don't have any resolutions for 2010. But I have decided to pay attention to the places in my life where there are feelings of dissonance, and ask, in prayer and meditation, where and how the dissonance may be leading me. I have renewed my commitment to honor the commitments I make to myself (even if this means limiting the commitments I make to others). My goal, by adopting these practices, is to lead a life that feels less scattered and more grounded. I'm looking forward to seeing how consonance shows up in the coming months.

Hearing the music of one's own soul. Listening for the places where tuning is needed. Discovering unheard harmonies. Attending to practice. Spending time with the Conductor. Sounds like a plan toward becoming more "resolved" to me.