The question most of us can expect to hear over the next few days is, “What are your New Year’s resolutions?” Whether or not you are in the habit of articulating a specific checklist for the first of January, there seems to be a natural tendency toward self-reflection as the year winds to a close.
My amazing daughter, Mackenzie, has been asking me a version of this lately, slightly more pointed: “So… do you have a resolution for 2026?” I’m not sure she loves my answer, but the question has stayed with me.
I’ve been thinking about the word “resolve.” The actual etymology hints at the idea of separating things back into their component parts, which is satisfying as a process of solving by sorting. This also gets its fingers around our concept of resolution in images; high-resolution images have been atomized into increasingly dense concentrations of minute parts (pixels). Inherent in the word “resolution,” then, is a mandate to focus on the details.
For what it’s worth, I reject the idea of beating yourself up about resolutions that fall apart by Groundhog Day. Still, it helps to consider the simple but important things that undermine our good intentions. I want to make that part of my daily mindset.
So, what I plan to do is “re-solve”—literally, go back and reconsider what I want to do better and how to do it. I’m willing to let go of the big picture to attend to the details on which relationships are built. Kindness. Empathy. Patience. It sounds simple, but acting with consistency is hard.
That’s my answer to Mackenzie. And my resolution for 2026.
Happy New Year!