The Tao of My New Year

The Tao of My New Year
James A. Lomax
JOMC221, Weeks 1 and 2

If you're my writing workshop partner and you're reading this, please note that it's available at the bottom in a linked Word Document. Enjoy!

This is my first essay for JOMC221. There are other things I'm passionate about, but I don't want to use them this early as essay topics. For now, I'm sufficiently passionate about change associated with how I know I should live my life, yet why leading that fitter lifestyle remains such a challenge. While I do talk about alcohol, this is not a cry for help or a signal that I should be in rehab. You could best characterize this essay as a slightly self deprecating "life-coach" conversation with myself.

Two weeks ago, as 2004 passed into the ether of history, I reflected on the highs and staggering lows of the past year. The final days of 2004 provided a tragic demonstration of modern man’s vulnerability to nature’s unrivaled destructiveness. Hopefully the tsunami tragedy will inspire a multinational commitment to help our fellow global citizens; one that endures to sanction increased compassion, tolerance, and freedom. At a more personal level, I looked forward to what 2005 held for yours truly.

I’ve never had a New Year’s resolution, that I can recall, and this year I’m unable to declare just one. I have an array of concerns which I resolve to improve owing to my own vices to be tamed and good habits to be formed. Labeling my determination to improve physically, professionally, and spiritually as “resolutions”, or attaching these desires to any particular “New Year” seems weak, clichéd, and crass. This year, I view the pursuit of my goals for change as a Tao, or “Way” of arranging my life for sustained improvement.

I never read the Tao Te Ching, though it was covered in a few history courses I took as an undergrad. I would hazard to say that Lao Tzu (“Old Master”) had more pressing concerns than 21st century humans’ individual lifestyle traits when he (or they) compiled the esteemed Tao. My personally-modified Tao stems from the education, upbringing, and throngs of self-help literature which, in surrounding us today, make it increasingly easy to know with a considerable measure of certainty how one should lead a healthy lifestyle.

Over the holidays, rubbing elbows with the distinguished older males of the extended Lomax family, I realized that I was acquiring, ever so slightly, a midsection girth similar to most of the matured males on my father’s side of our family. I attributed my seasonal weight gain and nascent pot-belly to two factors: first, a recently more sedentary lifestyle; and secondly, a near-nightly consumption of several beers during and after dinner. We stood at our annual Christmas gathering with arms cocked at 90 degrees; the middle-aged Lomax males swilling their scotch-and-waters, and I the junior aspirant clutching my tipple of choice, a Beck’s pilsner in its glorious green glass bottle. If one is lucky, sometimes the solution to a problem is within arm’s reach, as was my bottle of beer. First tenet of the Tao of my New Year: “Drink beer in quantities that are harmonious with my objectives of cultivating a healthy lifestyle.”

One recent change in my life that contributed to the demise of my previously flat belly was my separation from the Army, where I had served four years as an infantryman. Daily physical training (PT) had been de rigueur at the start of each duty day. I was fond of saying to my soldiers and peers that if we accomplished nothing at all during our day’s work, at least if we conducted challenging physical training, we had started the day with a small success. As a civilian, scheduling the time for physical activity will require more discipline as it’s completely optional, rather than compulsory as in the Army. Limiting my alcohol consumption to weekends, save for the occasional glass of wine with dinner, will make the act of rising at 0530 to run a few miles, or bike many more, far easier. The cobwebs of a late night bender are hard to shake in time for a disciplined early morning workout regimen. Second tenet of the Tao of My New Year: “P T, everyday; good for you, good for me.”

To paraphrase, Redd Foxx once said that health nuts are going to feel stupid lying on a hospital bed dying of nothing; in other words, a healthy life is just one way of dying more slowly. To me, this statement sounds like the opinion of someone that has embraced self-destruction, or momentary suicide, whereby the pain of reality is alleviated through overindulgence in any one of the age-old vices.

Reality is a very personal matter, so I’m not one to preach about interpreting life’s pleasures and miseries. Personally, I choose to be challenged rather than threatened by my own life’s impediments. I look forward to the opportunity that 2005 presents. In doing so, I’ll strengthen my readiness to face events as challenges rather than threats, with good habits enabled by the restraint of bad ones.

You can also view this essay in MS Word format; just click here.