JANUARY 1, 2026 – Unlike birthdays after a certain age, New Year’s Day brings a feeling of hope, renewal, and opportunity for more accommodating circumstances. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a person express resolve about much of anything when facing a birthday cake loaded with candles—or rather, impoverished of candles because it can’t accommodate the number corresponding to the person’s old age. New Year’s resolutions, on the other hand, are as commonplace as confetti, party hats and noisemakers going off with the drop of the ball over Times Square.
But let’s be honest: for most of us mortals, New Year’s resolutions lack a key ingredient, namely . . . resolve. For most of us, an accurate and possibly amusing analogy to our resolutions is the World Championship of Homemade Non-Airworthy Flying Machines—you know, those ridiculous contraptions designed (sort of) and fabricated (more or less) by frat bros, piloted by the more foolish among them, well-furnished with cheap beer, and launched from the shore of a small, shallow pond surrounded by a boisterous crowd of Rowdy Bull-sponsored college kids. The aircraft, so-called, roll down an elevated ramp, gain brief momentum, then launch into flight—for two, three, maybe three and a half seconds before reminding pilots and onlookers of Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation in the absence of Bernoulli’s Principle. The college fraternity stunt could be aptly renamed, “World Championship of New Year’s Resolutions Lacking Resolve.”
Given my own lousy track-record in the resolution department, I’ve decided on this New Year’s Day to try something . . . well . . . er . . . new. Rather than clear my throat and announce with rigor (if not true resolve) my New Year’s resolutions, I’ll trick the system—that is, fool myself—by short-circuiting the process and proclaiming that starting now, I’ll conduct my life with . . . ready for this? . . . with . . . okay, now, are you truly ready for this? (But how would you know until you know what “this” is?).
Not to leave you strapped in the observer’s seat of the bi-plane built out of milk cartons, poised for take-off at the top of the improvised launch ramp . . . but actually, to do just that—leave you strapped in . . . let me mention another perspective I adopted recently about the nature of New Year’s.
Every single year in the past, I’ve either said or heard another person say, “I can’t believe it’s [whatever the new year is]!” That observation is about as revealing as my wife’s predictable statement after climbing into the car on an extremely cold day: “It’s so cold out.” But this time around is different. While drafting a commercial loan document with an industry standard maturity of five years, I had to deploy first grade math: 2025 + 5 = 2030. Given the approach of the now new year of 2026, the first grade math problem triggered a notion of even higher math: 2030 MINUS 2026 = 4. Yes, 4, as in FOUR, as in FOUR YEARS, as in 2030 is now only FOUR YEARS AWAY! That stunning realization reminded me of the first time I heard of George Orwell’s classic, 1984, which at the time (circa 1968) seemed to be in the far distant future, though not as far away as 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I saw for the first time in the fall of 1968. In each case, “So far in the future,” yet now (“suddenly”?), “So far in the past.”
The year 2030—just four years from now—used to be far beyond my psychological frame of reference. Yet now it falls within my realistic (fingers-crossed) life expectancy and most certainly before sea water laps over the whole of lower Manhattan pursuant to current prognostications that assume zero progress in curtailment of greenhouse emissions and stabilization of the climate.
Okay, having shared this rather stunning realization of the chronological proximity of 2030, let’s get back to the “milk carton aircraft” of . . . What was it again? Oh yeah—of New Year’s Resolutions. What I was about to declare was my New Year’s Resolution, so now, finally, here it is:
My resolution (I have but one) is simply this: live life with more . . . resolve. Okay, fine. I can hear you say, “There’s no lift, no Bernoulli’s Principle in that”—a polite way of saying, “You wasted my time to tell me that?” But hear . . . er, read . . . me out. What I mean to acknowledge is that none of us lives “to own” immortality. When it comes to our inherent mortality, we’re all renters, tenants, lessees. Irrespective of genetics or environmental risks; health habits or health supplements; Tai Chi, yoga, Transcendental Meditation or gym memberships; prayer beads, prayer shawls, or prayer chains; all of us live under a lease of one term or another, and no lease contains a “rent to own” option. Some people live under a month-to-month lease; others have a one-year lease with automatic renewals—subject to the Creator’s early termination rights, with or without notice; with or without cause, which termination rights will be exercised (100% guaranteed) at some point.
If you read yesterday’s post, you’ll understand that on Tuesday my “Landlord in the Sky” granted me a lease extension of unspecified duration. This was accepted with utmost gratitude and celebration: given the current spate of cold harsh weather, I was relieved to know I wouldn’t be evicted and homeless under such inhospitable conditions or before I get to hold my second granddaughter or take all three of my grandchildren on nighttime cruises on the pontoon so that together we can gaze at the wonders of starlit heaven. But I recognized that even though “possession is 90% of the law,” the lease extension isn’t a deed to the property, as it were. The lease grants at most, a possessory right for a definite term—no different from the right of all other human beings who now live, ever have or ever will.
Accordingly—and here’s the bottom line—this time around and for each successive lease renewal that might be granted, I hereby resolve to make the very most of my occupancy here on earth. By this nudge may you too resolve to embrace your own tenancy—not only on this New Year’s Day but on every day that follows.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
P.S. With respect to the rest of your New Year’s resolutions, make sure you’re wearing a parachute . . . I mean, personal floatation device.
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
