Soap Box

Every year as the holidays come to an end and the calendar flips, so many of us feel that we should make declarations of our intentions to improve our lives in some way or another.

Seems a lot of our resolutions have to do with low calorie diets, nicotine abstinence, strenuous exercise programs and a myriad of other noble undertakings we have been putting off for years and we seem to think that the birth of a new year will strengthen our resolve and enable us to achieve our long sought goals.

Now, don't get me wrong, I believe in resolve and when coupled with tenacity and commitment positive things can definitely be accomplished.

Thank God, I quit a four pack a day smoking habit cold turkey in 1968, which took constant vigilance and denial to fight a craving that raked you over the coals all your waking hours, but like all things, when faced with a dogged determination, it finally goes away.

However, there is a fallacy in thinking that the coming of January first has the remotest thing to do with it and is probably the worst time of year to be making rash promises about anything to do with strict dietary discipline.

If you're like me you're so stuffed from the Christmas festivities, the left overs that seem to last and stay delicious for days, tempting you every time you open the refrigerator, that box of candy somebody gave you that you forgot about until a couple of days after Christmas and you can't waste that basket of creamy cheese your friend from Wisconsin sent.

So, by the time New Year's Day rolls around, your shirts are tight, your pants are hard to button and the zipper on your jacket tends to groan when you pull it up.

�Enough!� you tell yourself.

So, you set a regimen that a Spartan would shy away from, vowing to eliminate all high calorie, high fat, high taste foods, sticking to the cellulose and postage stamp sized servings of tuna, tofu and one boiled egg a day.

You get up in the morning full of determination, drink your black coffee, eat your dry whole wheat toast and look forward to your mid morning diet bar to get you through to your meager lunch and then going home to microwave some 225 calorie concoction that tastes like a combination of cardboard and sawdust.

You scour the internet and television exercise programs that advertise wonder machines that can get rid of those unwanted pounds in a matter of a few minutes a day, never realizing that the required "minutes a day" spent on that miracle machine they want to sell you is tantamount to spending time on some medieval torture rack.

Then by about the last of January the resolve usually starts to fade and a slice of bacon starts looking like the center piece on King Solomon's table, your sore muscles revolt at the very thought of being exposed to the rapid contortions of the wonder machine and you decide to just once skip the exercise for a day or two and have a big ol� juicy steak with all the trimmings for dinner, resolve takes a furlough, but after a few days of glorious freedom the guilt returns.

But when viewed on the rational side, remorse can be short lived and so instead of trying to adhere to such a restricting regimen you decide to "cut back" and do a "sensible" exercise program, like walking, at least when time permits, in other words take the long term approach, after all, isn't that the reasonable thing to do?

I think we make our New Year resolutions with the best of intentions, but there's just something about declaring our goals for a new year that tend to make us set our expectations too high to be practical.

I found a long time ago that it will take a little disciplined living to undo the results of our Christmastime merry making, but to try to banish it all in one fell swoop of a few weeks is simply not realistic.

And I learned that when I set the exercise bar too high, I dreaded and avoided it, at least for people like me, it's best to set a realistic daily regimen with an eye to consistency and duration rather than degree of difficulty.

Whatever you decide to do about New Year resolutions this year, my advice:

Keep �em real.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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