It just takes a minute

Have you given up on your New Year’s resolutions yet?

It’s January. The gym is packed. It’s impossible to even get to a locker through a sea of people in the locker room. Someone was lamenting on Facebook that our gym was too crowded. They were reassured: just give it a couple weeks. The New Year’s resolution crowd will be gone. They’ll give up.

Every morning my daughter and I pull a page from The Worst Case Scenario™ calendar. Yesterday’s was: what to do if the subway power goes out. Tip #1: cover up your belongings.

I get it. It’s dark. You’re blind. It’s a weakness.

But it also reminds me of a movie many of us watch every December: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

There’s the classic scene where Clark Griswold is trying for the umpteenth time to get his outside Christmas lights to turn on. Little does he realize, because he’s an idiot, that the lights are controlled by the garage light switch, where he’s also created a fire trap of power cords.

A guest goes into the garage to use the extra fridge. Needs to see. Voilà. Outdoor light show begins. Guest leaves. Lights go out.

My favorite part, though, is the neighbors. Margot and Todd. Played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Nicholas Guest.

They’re making out in the dark on their bed when the Griswold lights turn on and can probably be seen from space. They’re instantly blinded. They scream. They crash into each other.

Lights go out and now they’re blind in the dark, smashing into furniture. Lights on. Lights off. They’re falling down the stairs.

How do you make a good joke even funnier? Explain it :)

But I think about this scene a lot because it pokes at something funny about us humans.

Our eyes adjust to different lighting. When the lights go out, our pupils dilate like crazy to let in whatever little light there is. When the lights go on, our pupils constrict to block all that extra light.

But during that adjustment period, we’re getting too much or too little light.

So we’re blind for a moment.

But that tip from The Worst Case Scenario™ calendar did actually mention: “As your eyes adjust to the darkness.”

Holy shit, our bodies are amazing.

We actually can see in the dark. Give it a minute, and what was pitch black is suddenly navigable with just a little moonlight through a window.

We have a superpower.

It just takes a minute.

I think about that a lot when I notice how impatient I am with my goals. Our bodies are capable of insane change and resilience. They can bounce back. They can get ridiculously stronger. They can become better than we ever thought possible when we were younger versions of ourselves.

It just takes a minute.

I suspect a lot of us are already giving up on some goal we set last year that we wanted to see happen in 2026. Four weeks in, we’re not seeing the changes.

The weight isn’t coming off.
The strength isn’t increasing.
People still aren’t answering our emails.
We haven’t completed our side project.
Still can’t remember how to say How are you in Mandarin.
The closet is still a mountain of dangerous tools and ice-skates trying to spill out and kill us any chance they get.
Whatever it is.

It’s not where we want it to be.

But we can improve. We do improve. We achieve new things all the time.

It just takes a minute.