New year's resolution No. 1: Procrastinate.
Spend less time engaged in anything useful. Choose distraction over production. Watch hockey fights on YouTube. Check out friends' house assessments on-line. Delay drawing up a list of resolutions until the second week of January.
I think I can put a tick beside that one: First goal of 2011 achieved.
Resolution No. 2: Eat less junk food.
OK, but let's put this off until the holiday treats are gone, though we're already down to the Brazil nuts, chalk-dry Christmas cake, clammy candy canes that cling damply to their cellophane wrappers, and a cough drop dug out of the couch.
After a month of butter tarts and shortbread, it feels like an addict going cold turkey (with some stuffing and cranberry sauce on the side).
Resolution No. 3: Gain four pounds.
Off to a good start. (See above.)
Resolution No. 4: Spend more time with loved ones.
No problem. Restraining orders are for quitters.
Resolution No. 5: No more uplifting stories of inspirational people.
This is the biggest challenge. Every year, we are bombarded with tales of personal courage and selfless good works.
Doctors and nurses bolt for disaster zones as though they were five-star inclusive resorts. Cops race into burning buildings like Michael Vick booking it past the SPCA. Plucky seniors overcome adversity.
I hate plucky seniors. They make me feel bad. This is what's wrong with inspirational stories.
They're like your mother listing the ways in which your brother is better than you.
Your brother raised money for Haiti, she says. Your brother gave you a kidney, but all you got him was a Starbucks card. Your brother volunteers with the crisis line; he's such a good listener for a man with no ears. Isn't he wonderful?
Sure is, you reply, keying his car, because when she says "Isn't he great?" you hear "You could do better."
We don't like stories that remind us we could do better. We would rather read ones that make us feel superior, not humbled.
The following was among an Agence France-Presse compilation of some of the more remarkable stories of 2010: "A Frenchman who lost all his limbs in an electrical accident successfully swam across the Channel, a challenge he had been preparing for two years." This was depressing. I can barely surf channels with a remote control, let alone swim them limbless.
But then the AFP round-up gave us this gem: "Two Australian men needed surgery after shooting each other in the buttocks during a drinking session to see if it would hurt."
Well done, mates! Made me feel like Malcolm Gladwell by comparison. Some people might get lifted up by inspiration, but many of us would rather achieve parity by dragging others down.
This is why we revel in the annual Darwin Awards - given to those who drown themselves in the gene pool - and news reports about hapless criminals. (The best of 2010?
A San Francisco thief was arrested nine minutes after stealing an iPhone that turned out to contain a prototype GPS tracking application.)
They make us feel better about ourselves, relatively speaking.
It's particularly galling when the good works shatter our smug preconceptions. I know of a high school where 100 students recently shaved their heads, raising more than $50,000 to combat childhood cancer.
This was most distressing, not just because it looked like a Knox family reunion, but because it completely blew my mental headline ("Today's youth: Pampered parasites or meth-crazed threat to our security?")
Saturday, Victorians will shell out $65 a pop to attend an event called A Motivational Day, in which nine speakers will relate their incredible experiences. Among them:
n Warren McDonald lost both legs above the knee in a climbing accident, but continued to pursue his sport, even summiting Kilimanjaro.
n Helen Thayer skied and walked to the north pole with only her dog for company, then walked the length of the Gobi Desert in her mid-60s.
n Opera singer Jason Black almost died, cut his jugular veins in an awful accident, but came back to sing again.
n I once returned to a restaurant after inadvertently stiffing the server on the tip.
Somehow this wasn't good enough to get me on the Motivational Day roster. I'll try to do better next year, or maybe the one after that.
