Resolution 2019  

By JEFF LUND

January 18, 2019
Friday PM

(SitNews) Ketchikan, Alaska - I am way late this year on my Resolution. I know the deadline was Jan. 1, but I just can’t decide. Here’s what I have so far, each so vital to being a vibrant human in contemporary society. 

Blame more people. 
John Wooden once said, “If you lose a close game, blame the officials, that way you don’t have to think you didn’t work hard enough.” I learned this early in my coaching career and it helped tremendously. I wanted my players to constantly think that their success or failure is it not up to them. Now that I’m not coaching, I want to apply this to my life in general. 

Believe everything I hear or read. 
There is only one person who deserves the benefit of the doubt, me. The problem with most things is that they are complicated and listening to other people might make me confront or even change my world view. So, by listening only to people with whom I agree, I can help to eliminate nuance and discussion in favor of partisan shout-downs and “Good morning you jerk” texts to politicians who will never see them.  

Get upset about things I can’t control and won’t do anything about. 
I need more causes, more things to do nothing but tweet about from the couch. I need to be a warrior from afar, while ignoring what’s in front of me because who cares about my reality, it’s bias, digital summaries that truly matter. 

Allow people to bring out the worst in me. 
The best way to combat intolerance, ignorance or a lack of civility, is to be uncivil. If Guy hates me because I am a hunter, the best thing I can do is call him names and hate him back. In a month, he’ll see things from my perspective and change my mind.

As I started to write this commentary on the general state of things, I realized that I wasn’t writing so much about society as I was myself. Ignoring my hypocrisy and using sarcasm to point out the plank in everyone else’s eye. 

Maybe it’s so easy to see how ridiculous people are because I have so much practice at it myself. I wondered how many times I didn’t take accountability for things and instead blamed others. I wondered how many times I’ve allowed a team, political party or big issue thousands of miles away to impact my mood and then passed it on to whoever was around me.

Don’t I care? Yeah. Of course I care. But why would I outsource control over my mood to something I can’t control, then pass on my bad mood to those around me? I think it’s possible to be informed, concerned, “woke” and not let it make you miserable. It is so incredibly easy to be angry or depressed, to be so self-absorbed that everything is personal. It’s also really easy to be a jerk because society has put a value on the “right” to treat others like dirt as long as it’s funny or you’re on the right side of history.  

In my 20s I wondered who these positive people were who were happy and productive and how they survived the onslaught of negativity. A few years ago, my buddy Danny started a lifestyle apparel business in California and got me onto some books that weren’t self-help, but were motivational. I saw just how vibrant the community of positive, hard-working, happy people was. Not fake-smiled, oblivious, cheerleader types, but honest people who survive the worst life can dole out, without being a pessimist. People who are empowered by admitting they are the problem, so they can then be the solution. 

My world is just a tiny part of the world, but by focusing on it first, maybe I can have a better 2019. 

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