I asked a friend two days ago what will be her resolution for next year and she replied exactly as what I have heard before from anyone else, including my own inner chattering – it never last and it happened the same each year and thus there is no reason to do it anymore.
That sentence (though I have heard it umpteen times before as every new year approach) at that moment brought a new understanding to why everyone, including myself, failed in resolutions.
When we make resolution we wish for an experience that we do not have. Experience is an effect of causes we nurtured for it to happened. Many causes create one experience, like the germination of a seed is dependent on light, water, soil etc. When we fail to give those causes attention, but instead keep trying to create the effect, which in truth is futile, we are only creating something without any foundation, awaiting to collapse.
It is wise to be reminded that I don’t get what I want. What I immediately get from want is dis-ease, though it may not be obvious to me at that point of time while engrossing myself in my pursuit of want. Whatever I get or whatever I have in life is not derived from want. Accurately speaking, what I have is derived from causes that lead to the effect of what is for me. It is not my want that brought me to have but the nurturing of causes that resulted it.
My failure in seeing this truth fails me further when I don’t see result in my resolution. Instead of seeing this truth, I am blinded to think that I am a failure in keeping resolution and this wrong thought kept me away from making other resolutions, depriving me further from improving myself.
I have missed the mark all the while. I have bark on the wrong tree. How could I possibly achieve what I resolved if what I begin is not in total alignment with Nature, with Truth? I give importance to what is inessential, oblivious to what is essentially important for the manifestation of my resolution. It is not that I am weak in keeping resolution but rather I do not understand how the mind works. Everything comes into fruition when there is right understanding.