Happy New Year’s everyone! It’s the first day of 2015 and I truly hope this year will be a blessed one for each of you! I’m sure there already are plenty of people out there once again beginning it with another set of fresh promises and resolutions for themselves. I actually wrote about this very subject a year ago on New Year’s Eve. So if you would like to read about what my spiritual beliefs are with New Year’s resolutions, then please click the following link.
https://thetwelfthstep.com/2013/12/31/oh-those-new-years-resolutions/
Anyway, I just wanted to briefly speak on a related subject that can often also come up for people on a day like today, especially those in recovery, and that’s on making amends. For some reason, the start of a new year frequently gives people fresh resolve to make quick changes to their lives, such as making amends to those they hurt in the past. But doing so can be dangerous when they’re done haphazardly.
Haphazard amends are ones where someone tries to say they’re sorry and that’s about it. They’re also ones where they haven’t fully changed their behaviors yet that caused the damage in the first place. But most importantly, haphazard amends are ones where someone expects or demands them to be made in return after their own is complete when that person has hurt them as well. None of these things are what amends are about and that’s why rushing into making them because of the start of a new year is not the smartest thing to do. The truth is that whenever I made a haphazard amends to anyone, I only ended up having to make the amends again to the same person somewhere down the road.
The main point I’m really trying to make here about resolutions, amends, and any other major action that’s begun on New Year’s Day is this. Today is truly no different of a day than any other day of the year. While it indeed may signify the beginning of a fresh calendar year, the person each of us was yesterday is most likely quite similar to who each of us are today. Change usually comes gradually. Changes take time, effort, and fortitude. Things like resolutions and amends generally come when our spirit is truly ready to stick with them and not when we are still easily susceptible to falling back into old patterns and behaviors the moment things go astray.
I hope each of you will remember this as you begin this New Year and don’t do what I did so often in the past, when I rushed head first into promises to myself that I broke and amends that held no real foundation within my soul.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson