By Design

The most brilliantly complex systems come about by accident and evolution. Weather. Biology. Religion.

Our society has transformed Christmas into a festival of excess. Excess materialism, excess food intake, excess expressions of cheer. That's not all bad. Some of it is very good. There are also intense moments of introspection and spirituality and love of family, friends, people. All good.

Also a time of stress and melancholy, anger and suicide, sadness, family strife, and eleventh hour reconciliation. Name your nectar or name your poison, you will get more than you expect over Christmas.

As we've transformed Christmas, so we've transformed New Years. More excess -- but now it's a past-stress blowout. Fun, parties, fireworks (if you live in my neighborhood); or home alone if time and chance put you in that space -- and always the resolutions.

I don't make them usually, but I might this year. I feel it's a brilliant design to place new beginnings and new resolutions a week after the premier festival. So much about Christmas tangles our children and our childhoods and our marriages and our loves and losses, our families and those indescribable relationships, dreams not met and targets just missed, tangles all these and more -- faith lost, edging to restoration, almost there until the candles are blown out -- Christmas tangles all the loose ends into a beautifully lit ball and tosses it into our laps ... And then what do we do with it?

Roll it out onto the floor for a week and start a new year resolved not to do THAT again, or THIS, or SOME OTHER THING, and who knows, maybe this time one of those resolutions will stick.

I don't have any really bad habits beyond staring at a computer too much, but I can think of a thing or two I must resolve to change. So maybe this year, the brilliance of placing a few new bets a few days after reaping a lifetime's harvest of old ones will pay off. Time will tell.