New Year's Resolutions. As the years pass, the cloak of good intentions with which we cover our inadequacies grows increasingly threadbare. I must be more organised, I must lose weight, I must get fit, I must finish off any number of half-started projects, I must stop being sarcastic, I must eradicate self-pity, I must avoid ill-temper etc. etc. All pretty pathetic really! In the final analysis it amounts to a sort of "I must be good", like lines at Infant School. In fact, I have always suspected that there is something deeply pretentious about trying to pull oneself up by one's own moral bootstrings. It implies that I am, potentially at least, a far better person than I actually am, that my sometimes base or passive behaviour is some sort of temporary aberration from a Platonic idea which is my norm. It is certain that the world is full of people who are utterly convinced of the fact that they in some way actually embody moral perfection. That way lies the burning of heretics.

And yet the desire to improve in some way is something that is deeply rooted in us all. We are all inhabited, I am sure, by a sense that we are somehow incomplete beings. In a way it is this constant state of "want" which is the clockwork motor which keeps us moving. And not just in the moral dimension. In the society of relative plenty in which we live today, it is the force which powers the consumer society. Once I get the house/car/I-pod/ exotic holiday etc. etc., then I shall be complete. It's a joke, but a joke to weep bitter tears over.

What to do? It seems to me that the first thing we need to try is to stop trying to do something about it. Any effort based on a fiction of how I would like to be, of how I would like to appear to myself and others, is part of the problem, not part of the solution. All the great teachings in the history of humanity point in the same direction. The only escape from the hamster-wheel scrabble of life in the ordinary dimension of time is through the cultivation of Being. Since we are alive in every second, this state is not so far away. Try it. I dare you. Just drop "doing" for a moment and BE - HERE - NOW. Sense the relaxation of the body. Don't permit automatic thoughts to distract. Don't comment or explain. Dare not to know. Dare to be.

If I have a resolution, it is this: I shall remember. I shall remember to turn from automatic "doing" and satisfy my real want. I shall remember to be.