I’ve got one resolution worth following through on

Honestly, if I had a dollar for every time I heard someone tell me their New Year’s resolution only to see them break it before February, I’d be scraping the ice off my Ferrari right now instead of my Camry with 275,000 miles on it.

I must admit, I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. I understand how some people fall victim to the allure and get all jazzed when explaining them to other people or really concentrate to attempt to see them through. But I just think that, as Americans, maybe we have a little bit too much going on in our lives to devote the extra time and thought into changing ourselves for the better. We’re too easily distracted. Or maybe we’re just lazy, like the rest of the world believes.

And why is it we find the changing of the calendar as a perfect time to reflect on the alterations we want to make with ourselves or the way we live our lives? Is it because it’s just easier, beginning in January, like a starting gun for a race, to keep track of how far we make it until we fail?

I just love how, at this time of year, all of these self-help gurus are telling us to look for positives, to keep resolutions manageable, to chip away at your assessments. Blah, blah, blah. Quite simply, you either make the commitment to a resolution or you don’t. And then you follow through on that commitment or you don’t. It’s simple. And most of us fall by the wayside.

Despite the odds stacked against me, I recently decided I’m going to make a couple resolutions this year. Might as well break the drought. Sure, there are more sit-ups to be done and steps to be taken to become more organized and more money to properly budget, but I’m not going to bore you with those.

I’m going to tell you about one that I think, or I hope, you can learn from — and in turn, perhaps follow my lead.

Jay Agramonte, a friend of mine from college, was found dead in his home in Tampa on New Year’s Day. He didn’t show up for the New Year’s party he was supposed to attend and didn’t answer his cell phone, so my friend Sean went to his house the next day and found his lifeless body on the floor.

In the days that have followed, several of us who remain reasonably close since our school days have expressed a desire, through e-mails and phone calls, to keep in touch more. To tell each other how we feel and how fortunate we are to call one another friends. To share a laugh with Jay was, as my friend Cheryl put it, “something to feel good about,” and we suddenly long to share more laughs with each other, with him in our memory.

It is hard to believe that, at 30, he could be taken away. You just assumed we’d see him for years to come at tailgate parties, weddings and vacations. And now he’s gone, leaving the rest of us searching for answers, trying to find some sort of meaning amidst this awful reality. And while that may seem impossible right now, we can take some solace in the fact he would be happy that his death, while impossibly tragic to comprehend, has brought us closer together, especially those in our group who live in Tampa.

Already, in the week since his passing, I have received e-mails and calls from people I haven’t heard from in a year or more. I’d take Jay’s life back in a second in place of those phone calls, but my point in bringing them up is to acknowledge my one resolution this year I actually feel like telling you about. One that I hope you copy.

I pledge to enjoy my friends and family as much as possible, and most importantly, to do a better job of letting them know how much I appreciate sharing my life with them.

It’s too easy to think it and not say it, but there will come a time when the words are no longer possible. As Jay’s sudden death proved, that time can come when you least expect it. And leave you wishing you had one more laugh, and something to feel good about.

Trent Modglin
Publisher
The Real Chicago
Trent@TheRealChicago.org

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