Quasi-Resolution: Let's Ditch the Wimpiness

Otherwise known as "Tough It Out, Wimps."

I've realized that, aside from my typical blogging chagrin, I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions. They bespeak a kind of subtle laziness: "Now that the calendar's changed, I resolve to take charge of my health, my finances, and my life!" In other words, I couldn't act like an adult, i.e. make hard decisions and actually do the hard work to carry those decisions to fruition, without an arbitrary time marker to kick my rear into gear. My issue isn't with resolutions, you see; my issue is with resolutions time-stamped, as though the other 364 days of the year aren't fit enough opportunities to act decisively about healthy eating habits or exercise or actual penny-pinching budgeting or resolving differences with a friend or setting boundaries with family or whatever things there are that we can reasonably change in our lives.

Now that I've had that little rant, let's get on to this recent Wall Street Journal interview with Julian Fellowes, the creator of the period drama "Downton Abbey." Fellowes makes a point of criticizing "our lack of personal discipline" and how it begets vulnerability and weakness. Unlike early-twentieth century Britishers, like the characters on the show, we lack a certain toughness. "Some pain was the lot of every human being alive," he says. "It didn't matter if you were the King of France. We don't have that." Then the interviewer asks these intriguing questions, which prompt Fellowes to really open up about modern society:

So we've become a bunch of wimps?

We think we can go from cradle to grave without any pain at all. As a generation, we can be rather feeble about toughing it out. Even the people who were working in those households, I don't think they were all miserable. It was a tough job but if you had a good employer, like anything else, there were worse places to be. It was a hard life—you had to get up early, work very hard. They had a more realistic expectation of life.

Do you think people's expectations these days are unrealistic?

With marriage, our generation thinks that we should all be incredibly happy all the time. The moment we are not incredibly happy, something's wrong with the marriage. Well, nothing's wrong with the marriage! You've signed up to live with someone for a half a century, and as long as you still have stuff in common and are still close, it's fine. But you see people getting divorced and you think "What do you think is waiting out there?" I kind of liked that [the generation that grew up in the interwar period] would have laughed at this idea.

I really appreciate Fellowes' analysis of us because, ultimately, I think most of us are wimps. I include myself in this. Most of us have had pretty easy lives, and when hardship has come along, we react as though it's an anomaly to life. Like Fellowes implicitly points out, expecting painlessness all the time isn't merely unrealistic; it sets us up to think we can be "incredibly happy all the time." Both expectations are laughably infantile. And who wants to go through life with an infantile view of life?

Aside from the huge number of people who actually do want to cling to this way of thinking and living, I think many people want to ditch the wimpiness embedded in our coddled culture. And I'm one of them. With Fellowes' words in mind, I'm resolving to approach the problems and struggles and crosses that will inevitably occur in my life with at least a modicum of perspective; that is, that while pain is hard, sometimes terribly hard, it is temporary. True Christians will understand this. In fact, they're still celebrating the end of waiting for the ultimate Defeater of pain, suffering, and loss (that's "Merry Christmas!" in vernacular-speak). And billions of people have weathered far worse tragedies than mine and still managed to be thankful for the good things that come. If they can do it, and God Himself took on the worst of it, then I at least can strive to keep a stiff upper lip, come high water and whatever else comes--for Hell isn't coming for me.