OPINION: Let’s make life better for someone else - Father Gary Waddington, St Wilfrid’s Harrogate

How are the New Year resolutions going? All those good intentions still being kept, or did they go by the wayside before even January 1 was over?

For many of us the turn of the year is a time when we think about turning over a new leaf – ditching bad habits and trying to take up good ones.

But the reality is, that for many of us (I won’t bore you with a list of my bad habits, that would take more space than the editor allows) that can be really hard work.

Finding the motivation can sometimes be tough, unless there’s a big enough carrot – or stick – to get us going.

I wonder if part of the problem is that we can end up setting ourselves unrealistic expectations.

By that I don’t mean we set the bar so low that there’s little or no effort required.

More, I mean that we push ourselves into trying to be something or someone that we’re not.

Alas, no matter I suspect how hard I try, or how many ‘you can reach your goal’ motivational adverts I read, or how much I pay someone else to yell at me, I’m not going to have the body of a Greek god.

At the risk of sounding salacious, forgive me, I can reveal to you that underneath the clerical cassock, its more David Brent these days than David Beckham.

Alas, it’s all more blancmange than buff.

Now when I have my hair cut, I no longer wince that there’s a bit of grey hair in the tousled locks that fill the floor.

No, now I rejoice that there’s anything that isn’t grey!

And I thank God that I have got some hair to cut (just don’t mention there’s the possibility of it receding at the temples).

These of course, are all mere ‘vanities of vanities’. Trivially unimportant in the wider scheme of things.

And, perhaps, that’s my point.

The more we try to make frankly selfish trivial promises, the more we fail.

Might there be another way?

Rather than try to be what we’re not, or to fool ourselves that (to use a phrase my mother often rejoiced in uttering) we can be ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ maybe doing something for someone else might be not only a better motivator, but actually a better thing to resolve to do?

Using the skills, talents, and abilities which each of us have been given to help someone else.

Doesn’t that sound like a really positive resolution?

So mine is to ditch the scales, stop worrying about the bits that wobble more than they used to, and ask instead: what can I do to make life better for someone else?

After all, if we all did one single small act of kindness each day, wouldn’t that do more for the world than all those other things we tell ourselves matter, when they really don’t?

A Happy New Year to you all.