The New Year REALLY Starts in February

If you haven't picked a resolution for this year, you can join me on a yearlong -- er, 11-month-long -- journey to be less terrible at life.

Well, this year is off to quite a start. There’s the omicron variant, and everything that comes with that: childcare woes, school shutdowns, quarantines, testing, wearing kn95s, etc.

It’s a lot.

It’s too much.

And, the worst part is how unpredictable it is. It kills me that once again I’m diving headfirst into a new year feeling like I can’t plan for anything, can’t count on anything, can’t do anything. There’s also everything going on in the world: the anti-vax insanity, the increasing polarization. It’s all bad. Really bad. And it has been dragging me down. (Friends, I spent the majority of December as well as the first few weeks of January feeling very demoralized.)

But — but! — I am very stubbornly refusing to give in to despair or hopelessness.

Historically, whenever I’ve felt like this — like the world was ugly and awful, like my day-to-day life was slipping out of my control, like I was a little bit unmoored and lost — the thing that has always helped, without fail, is working on myself. On turning my focus inward, finding ways that I can be better, finding ways that I can add love and joy and kindness and justice and good into the world by being those things myself.

I wrote about this quite a bit in my memoir, but what I’ve done several times over the years is pick a list of virtues or traits that I want to develop — like love, patience, wisdom, discipline, kindness, generosity, etc. — and work on them every single day and try to develop them like habits. I got the idea from Benjamin Franklin, who made a list of virtues and then made up a checklist-like calendar on which he’d mark if he’d developed/used/etc. that virtue each day (there’s a short overview of his system toward the beginning of this post from The Marginalian here: https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/02/09/willpower-to-do-list/). I made a list of virtues, figured out the ones I wanted to work on, added them to my to-do lists in my little daily schedule notebooks, and every day I would try to check each one off. I’d sit down at the end of each day and ask myself questions like, “was I generous today?” “was I kind?” “was I loving?” “was I patient?” It was never easy, and I rarely ever had a day when I could check off every one of them.

One very unexpected side-effect of the exercise was how much compassion and empathy it gave me for others: it was so damn hard to be a good person — if it was hard for me, who was actively trying to be better, it was hard for everyone. And if I couldn’t be loving, kind, generous, patient, and good, how could I always expect and demand the rest of the world to be?

And the single most amazing thing that happened every time I did this was that I caught myself searching for opportunities to use and develop these virtues. I would go out of my way to be kind to someone or be forgiving or be patient. It genuinely made me such a better person. (And then I stopped doing it and, well, here we are again lol.)

Anyway, I decided over Christmas break that I need to do this again in 2022. I had hoped to start first thing in January, but that didn’t work, so I’m going to start it up on February 1st and pick one or two virtues a month to focus on and add them to the checklist. I want to read and think about each new virtue or trait as I go, and will be reading various things from philosophers so that I can better understand each one.

It’s a very Aristotelian way of looking at the world, to think of virtues like habits. It’s not that any of us are innately good or innately bad, but that we can practice goodness and develop virtues and become better than our past selves — or, conversely, that we can practice badness and develop vices and become the worst versions of ourselves. And if we can make habits out of brushing our teeth or spending less time glued to our phone screens, why can’t we make habits out of being kind, compassionate, patient, and loving? (Btw, it takes an average of 66 days (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.695.830&rep=rep1&type=pdf) to turn something into a habit, so we’d best get started now!!)) 

Here’s the list I made for myself:

1. February: Love

2. March: Sincerity/Truthfulness

3. April: Ambition/Pride

4. May: Patience/Good Temper

5. June: Temperance/Moderation

6. July: Prudence/Wisdom/Knowledge

7. August: Justice/Compassion

8. September: Fortitude/Courage

9. October: Friendliness/Sociableness

10. November: Gratitude/Thankfulness

11. December: Generosity/Kindness/Joy

(This list will probably change over time, we’ll see how it goes!)

I was going to keep this to myself and do it alone, the way I have throughout my life, and hesitated to share this with you all because it’s pretty personal. But then I thought that if I could inspire one other person to do this with me, even to do only one of the virtues, to try to be a little kinder or more joyful, then the world will be that much better. I’ll keep you all updated on my readings and will share my thoughts and progress and some checklists as I go.

So here we go! 2022 will be a year of virtues, of trying to be a better person, of trying to be a little less terrible. And I hope you’ll join me!

PS: If you have reading ideas or suggestions, please comment and let me know!