Ethical Resolutions

Dear Joseph,
Most New Year's resolutions seem to revolve around health issues like losing weight, exercising, and giving up smoking. Do you have any ethical New Year's resolutions?
-Looking for Improvement

Dear Looking,
First, I want to note that starting the New Year with ethical resolutions is a wonderful idea. Two hundred years ago, the Hasidic Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav offered this challenge to his followers: "If you are not going to be better tomorrow than you were today, then what need do you have for tomorrow?" Rabbi Nachman's point is profound. If you don't grow in some way tomorrow or over the following days and weeks, then your soul atrophies. How meaningful can your life be if your goodness is not expanding, if you are no better tomorrow (or next year) than you were today? With that challenge in mind, let me suggest two activities that will improve the quality of your own life and of those around you.

Declare periodic "complaining fasts."
Just as on a fast day you refrain from eating for 24 hours, during a complaining fast you refrain from complaining about anything for a full day. Such fasts should be invoked whenever the level of complaining in your house (or at your office) becomes excessive and demoralizing--which for most families probably happens once every two or three weeks. In our family, what generally triggers such a fast is a scenario such as the following. I come home in a good mood; I had a good day at work. My wife, however, has had a difficult day, and she starts to tell me about it. At first I am very sympathetic, but the longer she talks about how difficult her day has been, the more I start to rethink my day: "You think you had a hard day--you know what happened to me?" Within 10 minutes, we're both convinced that we're leading miserably unhappy lives. And so we declare a complaining fast.

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