No Resolutions

Lentil Soup

Oh ye who have no faith.

I want to believe, I really do, but I don't know,... I have been doing this lentil soup business on the first day of the new year for several years and results have been mixed at best, and downright terrible at not the best.

But once again, on the evening of January First, I dug into two bowls of lentil soup in hopes that it would bring me good health and wealth for year 2016 AD.  

Come to think of it, I have been pretty healthy this last year.  If we count the two months I was sick last January and February to the 2014 year, then in fact I have not gotten sick at all, besides some small snuffles or cough for a week or less. I did not get my usual pre Christmas sickness in 2015, so maybe the lentil soup had some effect.   The thing is, I didn't have the lentil soup last January 1st, so that theory is shot.

For the uneducated, as with every culture and religion there are traditions and suspicions associated with what to do on the first day of the new year.  In the tradition of the Slavs, or perhaps specific to the Czechs, but I think it is all Slavs,  you are supposed to eat two bowls of lentil soup in the evening of the First day of the new year and it will bring you (great?) wealth for the next year.  Some subsidiaries of these people believe you have to have a pickle in the soup too, or with potatoes of some style on the side.  Also in the Czech tradition, three Carp fish scales should be placed under the bowl to be found, or not found by the lentil soup eater.  If you don't find them, then you are out of luck in pecuniary matters for the next year.  If you do find them, you are in luck.  My wife stopped with that idea as we stopped with Carp altogether.  So I guess I am out of luck no matter if I have the lentil soup or not.

The thing is, in the past, it was finally leaked that Mother in law would put the three carp scales under her favorite son or daughter`s bowl, and the others got squat.  So that was kind of a scam of family nepotism.

What does all this have to do with the price of bread you ask?

Well, as many people will know, also in our Western modern, culture we have developed traditions for the First day of the new year.   We call it, making New Years Resolutions.  And the reason I mention the scam of the carp scales and the mixed, usually bad, results of my lentil soup menu is to rationalize my total, unfeeling, lack of resolutions I have made this year.  Ne, even scorn for the thought of making a resolution. In fact a negative resolution to continue on the path I currently trod that is leading me nowhere and progressing me in absolutely no see able forward movement.  At best sideways.  Flat.

Pt oi, phoi, spit, I spit on you, you resolution.

The reality being, that I think that it is a worthless act of self flagellation with the intention of trying to make ourselves feel good and be ambitious at the new year.  It is noted that people are usually more ambitious anyway at the beginning of the new year.  It has been analyzed even in the stock market that people are buying more stocks at the beginning of the new year and feel lucky.

This usually lasts ten days, maybe twenty.  After that we all get back into our routines and lose our shine and ambition and look at our bank account or mattress stash and see that we are deep in the hole from the holidays and we have gained ten pounds (4 kilo) to boot.  Then we realize or start to think that, its all a scam, I aint going to get rich quick.  And you know what?  For the most part you will not.  You know what the odds are of winning the lottery?  Get the picture?  The only way we get out of our personal holes is through steady day to day plodding, not running, not quickly, just plodding.  And sometimes there is gum on our shoes holding us back, or we step in some dog doo along the way.  My neighborhood is well known for its sidewalk treats (Which actually some people think is good luck, but I don't).  Deus ex Machina only happens in Shakespeare.   I rather follow Frank Zappa who said, "Watch out where the huskies go, don't you step in the yellow snow."

And you know what people?  The stock market is really starting out this new year, 2016, by tanking really badly.  Going down, losing percentage.  So you figure this year a lot a lot of people are doing what I am doing and ignoring resolutions also, because NO ONE is investing in the stock market this new year.  Its going down.  They are selling, not buying.  

The one year I made some resolutions and they worked was when I made my resolutions at the Jewish new year which is in September.  I  think I psyched my mind out and confused it so that the resolutions succeeded.  I had the same ambition as most people do at the beginning of the new year, but I didn't burn out by the 20th of the month because I was the only one making resolutions.  So I couldn't talk to other people at the end of the month and say, "oh yeah, my resolution was... was... was... but I stopped it".  I didn't talk to anyone about them.  I just kept them in my own heart and I kept working on them.  And it worked.  That was the year 2013 and although I didn't keep all of them, I did keep the resolution to start a blog which I did by December and another was to go to the back doctor and try to do something about my bad back.  I did and I kept with the back exercises till March of the next year!!

But besides that year, I don`t recall any resolutions that stuck or that got accomplished.  In fact I don't recall any resolutions I have made anytime in the past.

So folks, as I said in the beginning, its all a scam.  Your mother in law is placing the carp scales under her own daughters plate, not yours. You will not get rich overnight, you probably wont even get a raise this year.  At best you will break even.  So, fagetaboutit.  Just keep your nose to the grindstone and do your job and watch where you are walking especially in my neighborhood.  

There is one trick I have always wondered whether it would work, and that is REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY.     

        

Christmas present puzzle progress