New Year Resolution: Make An Ass Of Myself At Least Once In 2014

WHY? Thought you’d never ask! If you talk to my friends and family they’ll tell you it’s not much of a resolution—I’m likely to do it anyway and in a year’s time way more than once.

How? Let me count the ways! I’m not just talking about the toilet-paper-on-the-shoe, the unzipped-fly, or the back-of-the-skirt-stuck-in-the-pantyhose kind of moments. Those qualify as ‘make like an ass’ moments, for sure. But I can do so much worse. Like my heroine, Jessica Huntington, I routinely get in over my head—stew and plan, plan and stew, then rush in where fools fear to tread.

In such a rush my mouth often gets way out ahead of the rest of me—blurting some deep dark secret, asking some impertinent question, or making a well-meant but off-the-wall suggestion to someone in my path. I am absolutely brilliant when it comes to jumping to the wrong conclusion, taking off on a wild goose chase, or jousting with windmills.

I don’t know about you but I carry around a lot of fear about such moments. No one wants to get caught looking stupid, exposed, or feeling a breeze up their backside. And, you’re probably no fonder than I am of making other people feel uncomfortable, either because they have caught me in an awkward moment or have become an unwitting victim of some faux pas I have committed in the act of being an ass.

So why make it one of my New Year’s Resolutions? Well in part, why not embrace the inevitable? It’s going to happen—guaranteed. Maybe if I’m not so squeamish about being an ass I’ll be better able to roll with it when it does happen and can help those caught up in the moment with me have a good, hearty laugh about it. And, perhaps, I’ll be better able to support others who find themselves in a similar situation.

There’s another thing though. Mindfully contemplating that I will make an ass of myself evokes an intriguing dissonance. It reminds me how often in the past when I have been a complete and total ass it’s because I have been pushed to stretch or change. A fish out of water, flopping around on the muddy river bank, I do something outrageous. Confronted by a challenge that has flung me way out of my comfort zone what do I do? I make a complete ass of myself. Years ago Anthony De Mello noted in his book Awareness there’s something liberating in that.

“That’s the most liberating, wonderful thing in the world when you openly admit you’re an ass...Disarmed, everybody has to be disarmed. In the final liberation, I’m an ass, you’re an ass.”

Okay, so maybe it’s not so much that I make an ass of myself but that for a short time, at least, I can see it. When I make a spectacle of myself and others witness it we are bound together in awkward recognition of our vulnerability—disarmed and connected in a way that’s not possible when we all have our game faces on.

In 2014 I will make a complete and total ass of myself at least once! It’s not my only resolution for the year but it’s one I expect I’ll keep.