I’m going to replace my New Year’s resolutions with the Five Remembrances from the Upajjhatthana Sutta (“Subjects for Contemplation”).

The Upajjhatthana Sutta is also known as the Abhiṇhapaccavekkhitabbaṭhānasutta. I mention this only in case you need to impress people at a New Year’s Eve party. Delivered orally some 2500 years ago and written down in Pali around 29 BCE, the Upajjhatthana Sutta is famous for its teaching of the Five Remembrances:

1. It is my nature to grow old. There’s no escaping growing old.
2. It is my nature to fall ill. There’s no escaping illness.
3. It is my nature to die. There’s no escaping death.
4. Everything and everyone I cherish shares this same impermanence. There’s no escaping my being separated from them.
5. Thoughts and feelings are beyond my willful control. My actions alone belong to me. There’s no escaping the consequences of my actions.

These Five Remembrances aren’t resolutions; they are facts. You don’t have to accept them any more than you have to accept gravity. They are simply what is so.

Memorizing and reflecting on the Five Remembrances is said to deepen your appreciation of life and your compassion for the living. In my experience, it also eliminates the haunting question “Why Me?” When I remember that everyone suffers, there is no need to ask why I’m suffering. Not distracting myself with the story “Why Me?” allows me to address the problem at hand more creatively.

If the Buddha were a Jew, I imagine he would have ended each of the Five Remembrances with the Hebrew word titmoded: deal with it. There’s no escaping growing old—deal with it. There’s no avoiding illness—deal with it. There’s no escaping death—deal with it. There’s no escaping impermanence—deal with it. There’s no escaping the consequences of my actions—deal with it.