Clyde Kilby’s 10 Resolutions

Today I re-read Clyde Kilby’s 10 Resolutions, especially appreciating resolutions 1, 5, 6, and 7.

1. At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and
remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet
traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about
me.

2. Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless
evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall
suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said
of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end. I think
this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell
before his death when he said: “There is darkness without, and when I
die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness
anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.”

3. I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is
merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a
unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall
not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil
parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed
toward moral and spiritual manhood.

4. I shall not turn my life into a thin, straight line which prefers
abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract,
which of course I shall often have to do.

5. I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall
stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social
categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself
and do my work.

6. I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply
stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be
concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are.
I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their
“divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic” existence.

7. I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in
childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of
Lewis Carroll, the “child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes
of wonder.”

8. I shall follow Darwin’s advice and turn frequently to imaginative
things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis
suggests, an old book and timeless music.

9. I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp
all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested,
“fulfill the moment as the moment.” I shall try to live well just now
because the only time that exists is now.

10. Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the
assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee
landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to
the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a
stroke made by the architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega.