What -- me worry? I resolve not to

I don’t do much in the way of resolutions at year-end. Exercises in futility and guilt is my belief about this ritual activity in which well-meaning folk resolve to do things like: lose weight, cut down on the booze, quit smoking, stop lusting after people they’re not supposed to lust after, and be ‘nicer’ to their spouses, kids, neighbors and so forth.

Noble aspirations to a one, no doubt, but they invariably end up being guilt-inducers when the resolver fails or begins to backslide into his or her old ways. In fact, resolutions can be so stress-inducing that some in the mental health field believe we should not indulge the impulse. I’m all for that.

If we persist in wanting to make resolutions, however, these same mental health pundits suggest we narrow it down to a couple of possibly handle-able resolutions. Just had your 8th DWI? Maybe it’s time to take a serious look at your drinking. Your remaining lung causing you problems? Perhaps smoking is the culprit.

As for me, I have made but one resolution this year. That is to stop worrying. A tall order, you might be inclined to think. Indeed it is. That is why I’m going to do it in degrees. What I am suggesting is that a person cannot stop worrying completely, but a person can stop worrying about things about which he or she really shouldn’t give a damn.

Therefore, for 2008 I will continue to worry about such things as my health, my prospective longevity, my finances, the state of my relationship, the condition of the world environmentally and politically, the well-being of my family and friends, and whether I am still a dazzling looking dude.

I will not, however, worry about the following, and they will provide a good start on my quest to ultimately be worry free:

1.Britney Spears, with or without underpants. She’ll just have to carry on without my help.

2. The 47 new lifestyle things as recounted in today’s newspaper have a direct causal relationship with cancer.

3. The growing obesity plague in society. Why do I care? If you want to court diabetes and die prematurely, maybe that’s your business.

4. The plight of the recording industry. Hey, they’ve ripped off consumers and artists for decades, so if people are illegally downloading, why should it concern me. I don’t do that, by the way. Mainly because I no longer hear anything worth downloading.

5. Grandstanding showbiz folks telling me how I should regard famine, pestilence, or environmental collapse, not to mention how I should vote. Face it folks, many of you are in showbiz because you’re too dumb to do honorable work.

6. Who killed Jon Benet Ramsay.this year? Sad tale, folks, but we’ll never really know.

7. How the world will be a better place if Candidate B is elected rather than Candidate A. No it won’t be, so I won’t fret about it. By the way, Oprah as pundit? Why?

8. That I don’t a) drive a hybrid car or b) use fluorescent screw-in bulbs. I won’t worry about a) until they bring the prices down out of the realm of the ridiculous, and b) when they tell me how they’re planning to dispose of the mercury in these wonderful ‘environmentally benevolent’ bulbs. Until then I am going to hoard the old-fashioned incandescent kind.

9. Past indiscretions. Hey, they must have been fun or I wouldn’t have done them. And, I can’t change them now.
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10. The future. It will be what it will be and no number of sleepless nights will give me the power to change that.

There, that’s a good start. Just wait until next year when I can work on being entirely worry-free.