I have a New Year’s resolution.

But because I’m still trying to figure out the problem, it’s just taking shape.

Because I think this involves all of us, I’m going to do some thinking out loud here and hope you’ll follow along.

It starts with budgets and what’s called the bottom line.

In one sense it is, of course, a bottom line. There’s so much money to go around, the balance sheet has to work, and money doesn’t go on trees. Period.

Well, not quite.

That period is more like a comma, because things don’t end there.

In relations between people as in relations between physical particles, every reaction creates an equal and opposite reaction.

So when we hit the bottom line and cuts are made, people disappear, and we miss them.

We miss something else, too: The sense of security we felt when they were still here, in large measure because everyone who is left feels more vulnerable.

And that’s not just the people on the bottom. Because, in this economy, no class of people is more aware of its own vulnerability than the one that has carried out the cuts. Those people know they may be next. And so the shadow of vulnerability covers all of us.

This can lead us all to feel like commodities, units of input that might be traded on the stock market or the Board of Trade in Chicago like futures on wheat, corn, soybeans and hog carcasses.

And it can alter our sense of connection with one another.

This, in turn, can eat away at a sense of loyalty and trust, which are feelings that humans have, not commodities. It can cheapen our relationships with one another, and we feel like we do when fast food place charges the same amount for a sandwich by reducing its size rather than its price.

And because this is happening in individual businesses, schools, health care institutions — you name it — it sets off a larger chain of events.

As each institution in the larger community is forced to make its cuts, those erode its relationships not only with its current employees, but with its former employees and the community as a whole.

Whether this is worse because because so many decision makers seem to be at a corporate headquarters elsewhere, I’m not sure. Sometimes we just need a bad guy to point at when things are going bad.

On the other hand, the scale of businesses tends to be bigger, so maybe it’s inevitable that the decision makers are farther away and decisions are less personal and involve only the financial bottom line.

The other day, all this reminded me of old movies in which the Roman and Greek gods sat around a table up in the sky and entertained themselves by looking down at the world and messing with the people down below.

Down below, it sometimes feels like a world in which all the people who used to answer phones have been replaced by answering machines that transfer us from one number to another until we reach the recording that says, “you will now be disconnected.”

To be fair, some of these changes we roll with and get used to.

But if change happens too quickly — in too short a time —it’s harder for us to adjust.

The bottom line for me is that we’re in the midst of times that are weakening our sense of community and loyalty to one another. And that weakens our community.

So how do we preserve the sense of community we all need in the face of this?

How do we adapt?

First by believing that we can, and the tradition of the New Year’s resolution offers hope in that regard.

So does the word itself.

Resolution is re-solution; its very existence is evidence that people have always had to find new solutions; that we’ve always had to re-solve problems we once thought were solved but have arisen again.

The word also tells us that in doing so will require resolve, or courage and staying power shown by those who have come before us.

As I said, I’m not quite sure of what my resolution will be.

But I know my bottom line is this: to try to find a way to resolve our problems in ways that don’t dissolve our sense of community.