Gentle visitors, a colleague of mine today announced that he had lost four pounds on his new diet in just a week -- one of his resolutions for the New Year. Your humble Contributor was, of course, quick to congratulate him, though he was also forced to note, after a quick calculation, that his colleague would, if he maintained the current rate of weight loss, cease to exist in a year's time. Unfortunately, this colleague was displeased to hear this cautionary observation, since it was taken as deflating in what was a concerted period of deflation. A paradox.
In any case, your humble Contributor has, for the New Year, taken to living more resolutely a dissolute life. Consider that, rather than taking the stairs, he patiently awaits the lumbering lift. Or, that, while others are sprinkling flax seeds on otherwise flavorful meals, he is wisely hunting up fatback. Or, that, instead of undertaking a program of vigorous exercise, he prudently leans back in the lounger. This is virtue in action -- or, rather, in inaction -- but, the sense of it must be clear.
Who knows, but in a year's time, our next president may be sending out the Obesity Police to serve a citation on our then plump person. But, that would occur in another New Year, with its own resolutions. In this year, our program is to supply what is lacking in our own gravitas. It does no-one any good in any way to be seen as a light-weight; whereas, it does one wonders to seen as having heft and sway in important quarters. And, if those quarters be the hind, so be it.
Further, few of us would celebrate a loss as we would a gain, any more than we would greet lossful employ for gainful. Nor would we prefer the petty to the grand -- in larceny, or any other matter. No. To be so inclined would be to appear slight, scrawny, spare, and even meager.
Let it therefore, BE RESOLVED, gentle visitors, that we will attend to our attenuated frames and become, once again, men and women of substance.
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