New Year's Resolution

With the New Year barely beginning, it is time to think again about making New Year’s resolutions. However, we make these resolutions every year and nothing much seems to come of it. This year things, of necessity, may have to be different.
 
In the past , I have liken a New Year to a new child, and that is not such a bad analogy as I think of it now. It seems we have not been such good parents for some of our past years. We have spoiled them with over indulgence and now it looks as though we are going to have to pay the price.
 
Our financial institutions of past years have been generous with easy money and too much credit for loans that were not secure. Don’t we often make the same mistake as parents? While our motives may be different, theirs being for profit and ours for love, we still hope that our generosity will be met with success. Sometimes it is, but more often, the more we give, the more our spoiled brats
expect.
 
It’s rather the same thing as the parent loaning money to a child. They are very appreciative when the loan is made, but when it is time to repay, they become angry. The fact that we helped them with a loan in the first place is forgotten. They are only upset that we will not continue to give and no long can afford not to be repaid..
 
We have also spoiled our past years with large, gas-guzzling cars that keep us dependent on foreign sources for oil. As prices go up, we are unable to continue to afford these cars. As more and more people realize this, they turn to smaller foreign cars that are more economical. Good for the immediate problem, but bad for the auto industry that is stuck with inventory and the ability to produce only what is no longer in demand.
 
Our New Year must pay for mistakes of past years with high prices for gas and taxes dollars to keep the auto industry from going under. But, sometimes overindulgence reaches the point when we cannot continue with our wasteful ways, in spite of our unwillingness to change.
 
An so it goes, big homes with big mortgages that made our past years well off on the surface, but with a financial foundation that was bound to crumble sooner or later. Now our New Year must deal with foreclosure and loss of the security of home ownership that came from letting past years live beyond their means like spoiled children with no financial foundation of their own for a secure future. We look for something to blame. T

he years of the past are over now. They cannot return what is already gone. So, we blame the present, the things that are still here: bankers, automakers, politicians. Yet we are the parents and cannot let our institutions fail any more than we can turn our back on our own children. We bail them out with loans and gifts that do not need to be repaid. This time we attach strings to our money. 

Industries promise to change. The child promises to do better from now on… and life goes on. We look optimistically toward a new year. We hope this time things will be different. In spite of all that has been done wrong in the past, parenthood never ends. If our children fail, we too fail as parents. 

This must be the year that resolution succeeds.

Copyright 2009 Sheila Moss