Opinion Articles

*At the turning of the year…
By Tracey Edstein
Tracey Edstein is the editor of Aurora, the newspaper of the Catholic diocese of Maitland-Newcastle.

“To lose weight…”
“To become fit…”
“To live more simply…”
“To spend less time working and more time with family and friends…”

New Year's resolutions of course…but last year's or this year's?

Are your 2006 resolutions significantly different from – or more likely to be fulfilled – than your 2005 resolutions?

More to the point, why should we bother making such resolutions, if they soon fade away unfulfilled, lingering only as an occasional reminder of inadequacy or sheer inertia?

The New Year is traditionally a time to make resolutions to be stronger, fitter, faster, more effective, or simply better. However, how often do we make resolutions only in response to a glib question or after a few glasses of champagne? How much inner resolve is really behind those resolutions?

There is a natural tendency to see the turning of the year as an opportunity to turn over a new leaf, and that can be a healthy and hope-filled gesture, even if no one else knows about it.

A colleague suggested that the time for Christians to make resolutions is not New Year, but Advent, the season of four weeks that precedes Christmas. This is the turning of the Church's year and an appropriate time to resolve to be kinder, more generous or more active in living one's faith.

This sentiment is admirable – but in contemporary Australia on 2 January, the impetus is definitely “New Year, new me!”

And have you noticed that our resolutions (whether or not we can bring them to birth) are usually focused firmly on ourselves?

A Pink Floyd song On the Turning Away (Momentary Lapse of Reason, 1987) urges each of us not to exclude “the pale and downtrodden” from our considerations:

Don't accept that what's happening
Is just a case of others' suffering
Or you'll find that you're joining in
The turning away…

In September-October of last year, I took the opportunity – not without reservations – to spend three weeks in India. Most of the group's time was spent visiting projects in urban and rural slums. The emphasis was firmly on development, not charity. The depth of poverty was difficult to grasp.

For most, even after such a confronting experience, the only realistic response is to attend to the needs of the poor here. Supporting the poor of India, other than financially, is difficult within the confines of family and work responsibilities. Having said that, one member of our group of ten has elected to spend a month later this year working in Orissa, the most disadvantaged of the Indian states.

At the turning of the year, might I suggest that each of us resolves to take one concrete action that will make a real difference to “the pale and downtrodden”?

Is it only a dream that there'll be
No more turning away?

  *This article was published in The Newcastle Herald, 2nd January 2006.