Making resolutions may be irrational in the certain knowledge that that they will soon be broken. But behind each personal promise is a deeper realisation.

It takes only a brief retreat from everyday life for all sorts of reflections float to the surface – demanding all manner of decisions.  No wonder that for most of the time we keep ourselves busy.

In everyday life we busy ourselves decorating and maintaining some chosen theme.  With a voluntary or enforced break, a training course or a holiday, without the daily certainties the ‘luxury’ of fresh thinking is not constrained by the pressures of reality.

This year I was exceptionally lucky.  Well before the usual Christmas retreat from work-life I found myself taken out of the planned routine by an unexpected hospitalisation.  It should not have been unexpected – it was sort of obvious that I’d been increasingly flaky in the weeks running up to the event – but this lethargic feeling had crept up very slowly.

With the benefit of hindsight it later became clear that I’d been heading downhill for at least two years.  I was lucky in the sense that I was in good hands throughout the last few weeks and even luckier to discover on recovery what had been missing these past few years.

Apart from recommending the Sainsbury checkout queue as a really good place to check out and rediscovering the excellence of the NHS, the most interesting experience was being subject to a completely different environment for a long enough time for serious introspection.

Firstly you discover the depth of friendship – and it works both ways.  You really do realise who matters – and with whom you most need to share the experience.  There are strangers who are suddenly important for your well-being and there are others with whom you have not previously shared so much but who now would have so much to share if only they could be reached.

Secondly you gain perspective.  Living in a hospital ward where other patients are in far worse condition makes you realize that whatever your troubles these are relatively trivial.  Compared to the way others are suffering you can almost feel guilty about getting better.

Thirdly you start to reappraise priorities.  You may have little idea of the eventual outcome but to be sure some adjustments to life will be required.  Will it be more or less active?  Will this be a good time to give up stuff and do different things?  What, you question, might you now be good at – if anything?  Half-remembered poetry drifts into mind – Milton considering how his life was spent – and this debate is conducted internally and entirely alone.

And then I got better.  The world carried on perfectly well without my assistance.   Whatever seemed so very important one morning – something that absolutely must be done as soon as the shopping trip was over – didn’t need to be done or was managed quite well some other way.

I was exceptionally fortunate to recover from the final stroke quite quickly.  I felt blessed in realising the depth of friendships, new perspectives and new priorities.  But more than that I realised that I had been ‘under the weather’ for a very long time.  There is no simple joy quite like this new found ability to reverse the car with a glance back over one shoulder, or climbing into trousers without leaning on the wall for support, or the freedom from a lethargy that never previously had been admitted.

With these realisations the negative notions of resolving to give up stuff could be abandoned.  There is no need for resolutions directed at resolving problems.  There are so many new things to be realised – to be made real in some new measured and deliberate way.

And all that was before the planned break for Christmas!

I give thanks for 2011 and wish you, dear readers, a very happy and fufilling New Year,

David

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