A living resolution
By any honest accounting, most of us arrive at a new year carrying two things: plans for who we want to become and the weight of who we have already been. The temptation is to wish away the mistakes, to imagine a clean slate unmarked by bad judgment, missed chances or words we wish we had never spoken. But if we could erase all the mistakes of our past, we would also erase the wisdom earned by living through them. What’s done is done. It is okay to look back. It is dangerous to live there.
That truth sits at the heart of every meaningful resolution. Not the brittle, short-lived promises scribbled down on Jan. 1 and forgotten by February, but the kind that grow into habits and quietly remake a life. The goal should not be perfection. It is progress. It is becoming a better version of yourself — call it “Version 2.026” — shaped not by regret, but by resolve.
There is an old and mostly forgotten newspaper tradition worth recalling. Before the 1970s, some papers did not place the word “obituary” above death notices. They used a sterner, more instructive title: “Resolutions.” The implication was clear. A life, when it ends, becomes a lesson for those still reading. The warning for the living is equally clear: do not be dead in a resolution. Be alive in it. Let it change how you live.
That idea matters for individuals, and it matters for institutions — especially newspapers.
For those of us who believe in local journalism, 2026 cannot be a year of standing still. The goal is not merely to publish papers, but to strengthen them. That means deeper reporting, clearer writing, fairer coverage and a renewed commitment to accuracy and context. It means remembering that a newspaper’s first loyalty is not to convenience, clicks or comfort, but to the truth and to the community it serves.
Goals, if they are to last, must be built into habits. For a newsroom, that means showing up prepared, listening carefully and treating every story — whether about a school board meeting or a high school championship — as worthy of care. It means resisting cynicism, which is easy, and choosing curiosity, which is harder. It means understanding that credibility is earned slowly and lost quickly.
Kindness and compassion belong in that list of goals, too. They are often dismissed as soft virtues, but they are, in fact, practical ones. Communities do not hold together through argument alone. They endure through empathy. A newspaper that remembers the human beings behind the headlines — the grief behind a police report, the hope behind a ribbon cutting — serves its readers better than one that does not.
Knowledge must also be a deliberate pursuit in 2026. The world is not short on information; it is short on understanding. That places a responsibility on readers and writers alike. Learn more. Read widely. Question assumptions. Seek out voices that challenge rather than flatter your own views. Knowledge, like kindness, compounds over time.
History offers a caution here. In old newspaper clippings, amid debates about taxes, prices and politics, you can find voices from decades past expressing the same mix of hope and uncertainty we feel today. A member of congress in the 1950s spoke of striving to serve both national interests and individual needs. Clergy warned of moral disintegration amid material progress. Writers worried that something essential had been cut loose, like a spider snapping the one strand that held its web together.
The lesson is not and never has een that the past was better. It is that every generation faces the same choice: whether to drift and give up even tring or to decide to be better through action.
As a new year begins, resolutions will be made and broken. That is human. The better aim is simpler and harder: to decide, day after day, to move forward. To let past mistakes instruct rather than imprison us. To build goals into habits. To choose kindness when it would be easier not to. To pursue knowledge not for show, but for understanding.
A resolution, after all, should not read like an obituary. It should read like a promise — one meant to be lived. And be resolved to register to vote
Editor’s note: Joseph McCain is the publisher of The Star-Herald. He has worked in the newspaper industry for over 30 years and may be reached at 662-803-5236 or 662-289-2251 or email news1@starherald.net.
