Dear Readers,
When I was growing up, one of my family’s few annual traditions revolved around New Year’s Day. On New Year’s, we would all eat black-eyed pea soup – and woe betide you if you did not consume at least one pea from that soup before the stroke of noon… As I grew older, I came to think of eating these peas not as a means of warding something off, but as a form of support for your freshly minted New Year’s resolutions. For whatever reason, I have always liked the idea of New Year’s resolutions. As far back as I can remember, I have been inclined toward striving for self-improvement and taking active steps to cultivate my mind, heart, and spirit, and so the idea of making a vow to adopt a new good habit at a set time of year, as a fresh beginning of a cycle, has been something that I have always taken seriously.
As Aristotle argues, man is a creature of habit, so nothing behooves us more than to cultivate good habits over bad ones. Unfortunately, good habits are difficult to instill, while bad habits are all too easy to acquire if you let your guard down. Often my New Year’s resolution is not something “new” after all, but rather the resolve to re-establish myself in some salutary practice which I once followed, but subsequently lost. This year, for instance, my resolution is to get back to my former activity level. Through September of last year, I engaged in various forms of physical exercise for several hours each day. I believe in combining mental, spiritual, and physical exercise as much as possible, having found that it can assist the mind to immerse itself in a work of literature if the body is working hard as well. However, last autumn I had to have an operation with about a two-month recovery period. Coming up on three months now, I realize that I have allowed myself to remain out of exercising mode for longer than I need to, precisely because I have lost the daily habit. So, that is my 2024 New Year’s resolution: to get back to my former habit of multiple exercise sessions each day (running, kettlebells, dumbbells, HIIT, free weights, weighted jump rope, fencing, and yoga, besides general free movement).
If you are more in the market for a brand new good habit, especially something language-learning related, I’d like to hear about it – and if I can be of any help in establishing some linguistic praxis, please let me know. I suspect, though, that if you are reading this newsletter, you have already heard some advice from me, and perhaps you have just been waiting for the right time to implement it. If that ends up being your New Year’s resolution, I’d also like to hear about it!
My own experience with integrating new good habits into my life is that there is usually a sense of relief when I finally do so, for it is rare to act upon a good habit immediately upon hearing of it. It seems we need to hear good advice multiple times, from different people in different settings, and that at some point when the time is right, we (finally) act upon them. We often feel the good effects of good habits taking hold with a bit of bittersweet “why didn’t I do this before?” mixed in, after a long period of avoiding doing what we should – and perhaps even want to – do. Whatever those habits are for you, I wish you the best of success with them!
Finally, on the off chance that you are short on ideas for resolutions, on New Year’s Eve I posted a video recommending the practice of keeping a gratitude journal – please take a look if you are intrigued. Gratitude is a form of joy, and this is a practice that, especially if you do it just before a study session, will leave you lighthearted and full of good will, so that your study session will be much more productive and enjoyable than it would otherwise.
With best regards,
Alexander Arguelles