Resolutions

I hate New Year's resolutions. Until a few years ago, sometime around December I would always start thinking about what I should do differently in the next year. What can I improve in my life? What should I add? What should I take out? Am I actually going to stop biting my fingernails this year? (Keep dreaming, Mom.) I usually couldn't ever come up with anything that I thought was good enough for an official resolution, so I'd end up picking something fairly arbitrary that I forgot about by the second week of January. Finally I got to the point where I didn't even bother anymore. But this year, I decided to reevaluate the idea as I've been preparing to head overseas for a semester at the University of Ghana.

While I am for the most part absolutely excited about the upcoming semester, I have also had a bit of anxiety about it. My program information has cautioned that it will be difficult to make friends, even by the end of the program, because Americans are typically thought to be greedy. I have been trying to pack modestly, and I requested to be placed in a homestay with a Ghanaian family so that I can have a more authentic experience. Yet as I've been getting all of my vaccinations, picking up prescriptions, scheduling doctors' appointments, and buying new things for my trip, I am constantly aware of the fact that I am still purchasing things a huge majority of the world cannot afford.

In the midst of stressing over how I'm going to fit my entire life into the airline's modest baggage limits (while leaving room to bring back souvenirs), I've been doing some reading. I've picked up "Lonely Planet" and other travel guides and been brushing up on my cliché white-Westerners-clash-with-African-culture books: "Things Fall Apart" and "The Poisonwood Bible" for example. At the beginning of "The Poisonwood Bible," I was struck by this musing of the wife of a Southern Baptist missionary to the Congo: "Some of us know how we came by our fortune, and some of us don't, but we wear it all the same. There's only one question worth asking now: How do we aim to live with it?"

I think the reason I hate New Year's resolutions so much is there is kind of this implied fact that there must be something wrong with our lives, that we're not good enough how we are. And maybe that's true, because I don't believe anybody is perfect. But I guess I just don't like the approach — we pick something bad and try to make it better. Instead, this year I want to challenge you to pick something good and figure out how you can put it to use. I know while I am in Ghana, I will try to think about how I can use my resources and talents in a positive way.