Resolutions in Aggregate

If you forget your 50 sits up and press ups one day, but do double the next, have you still respected your New Year’s resolutions, especially if you’ve added some additional bicep curls on the second day? If you eat half of your son’s leftover chocolate dessert in the evening (to avoid unnecessary waste of course), but your weight is plummeting, then have you broken a promise to yourself? If you think that cutting out second helpings and fizzy drinks is actually what is causing the weight loss rather than the dessert thing, are you still in line with the spirit, rather than the letter, of the self-imposed law? Maybe a roundabout way to say that I’ve not completely respected my resolutions (well it is January 5th), but the philosophy of New Year’s resolutions, which is now wreaking havoc during my waking hours and which was up until yesterday unknown to me, is just another reason not to do them. Or maybe that is indeed the reason to do them – isn’t that what virtue is all about, or is that just Catholic guilt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_guilt)? God damn Martin Luther…