2026 New Year’s Resolution – Would It Help?

As you may already know, I’ve been writing this blog for more than ten years, and that means I’ve almost exhausted the mother lode of stories that I had to tell.

And yet, I’m not planning to stop writing this blog any time soon. After all, I’m only 85.  My father and aunt both lived to be more than 100.

This means I’ll most likely need to come up with close to a thousand more ideas to write about.  But I often find now that Nancy, my editor and friend for more than 500 blogs, has a better memory than I do.  Last week she encouraged me not to write about two of the three ideas I’d proposed.  Why?  “Already used.”  (She must think she has the memory of a thirty-year-old.  I don’t even remember what that was like.)

That’s the Pre-face.

The real face is, “Would it help.”

To remind you, in the movie Bridge of Spies, Tom Hanks plays the role of an attorney defending Mark Rylance (the alleged spy Rudolph Abel).  Hanks asks Rylance if he understands that if he is convicted, he could be executed.

“I do,” said Rylance.

“But you don’t seem to be upset,” Hanks said.

Ryland’s answer will stick with me forever (or for the next 15 years, whichever comes sooner), “Would it help?”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (possibly in another blog), if there is nothing further you can do to solve a problem, even one as serious as imminent death, why waste time and energy by worrying about it?

One way I achieve this is by staying in the moment.

My wife never asks me, “Did you miss me?”  She knows, by now, my answer.  I don’t miss people because I am focused on the person that I am with, not some phantom elsewhere in the universe.

And, as I’ve mentioned before, when a coworker asks me if I’m looking forward to a vacation, I know the polite answer is something like, “You bet.”  But my truth is that I begin to enjoy a vacation when I step into the airplane, and seldom a moment before.

So while I know there might be many things worrying you, this year I encourage you to immediately ask yourself, “Would it help?”  You already know my answer to that. (And, if not, maybe I’ll remind you next week.)

But my advice — don’t think about 2027 until about a year from now.

Alan