Not too late for meaningful resolutions
by Dan Rzewnicki, Editor in Chief
January 11, 2012

As the New Year begins, we often begin to formulate our New Year’s resolutions. Our resolutions usually fill our heads with unrealistic plans to, before spring of course, lose 50 pounds or pack on the same muscles as the man on the front of Flex magazine. While our resolutions may seem good and ambitious, I often gape at the selfishness of everyone’s, including my own, resolutions.

“ME” usually serves as the sole beneficiary for nearly every New Year’s resolution I have ever heard.  We formulate all of our resolutions around us. Rather than utilizing the opportunity for a fresh start to the New Year, we revert to our selfish ways and habits. Also, perhaps even more pitiful, we fail to follow through on even the resolutions that benefit us.

I have yet to hear someone say, “I plan to be a better person this year by recycling.” Or, “I plan to stop lying and judging people this year.” While these resolutions still leave “ME” as the subject, they benefit others and the world that we live in.

Why not focus our resolutions on others and the world? We could resolve to be better siblings, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses and parents. Even better, why not resolve to make it cool to help involve others in sports and other activities, make it cool to help a student that might be struggling in a class or make it cool to stand up for what we believe in, no matter what everyone else may think.

Even better, we can resolve to meet and talk to people that we have never talked to before, despite race, economic standing or appearance. Furthermore, while we talk with them, we should throw away all previous judgments we formulated of those people and wait until after we have talked to them to form new, informed impressions of these people we now know a little better.

We should consider the lives we live compared to the lives of our peers or the lives of  people around the world. We complain about the petty inconveniences that we face every day while our peers and others battle hunger, poverty and natural disasters each day in silence.

In the New Year, let’s remember our fortunes and how we could use our fortunes to benefit others. Perhaps before “improving” ourselves, we should first appreciate our haves and have nots.

I realize that this editorial will reach only a small number of readers; therefore, I could hardly expect to change the world with my few short paragraphs. However, if only a few students from our school read these words and break away from the “ME first” mentality, maybe we could change the school this year, and maybe if the students (and teachers) of Leechburg could adapt a more selfless ideology, the community could as well, and who knows where the changes may lead.

This New Year, even though we may already have set our resolutions in stone or broken the ones we made fewer than two weeks ago, we should review our actions and thoughts from 2011. It’s never too late to make a new resolution and a positive step in life. We can break away from the “ME” and consider more of the “THEM” or “US.” We may discover that we can help a great number of people or that even a smile or kind word in the hallway may be much more significant than we had ever imagined. And finally, we might realize that “ME” may not be nearly as important as “ME” thinks it is.