New year, new me, the common saying goes. I have always been skeptical at best regarding the culture surrounding New Years. I have been downright scathing at worse. It is a week-long season of floating on a high in the belief that the beginning of the year somehow imbues us with extra discipline, extra capacity for self-control, and an extra fortitude in the face of temptation regarding what we now view as old vices.
As someone who regards time as often tenuous, sometimes oppressive, and always abstract and indefinite, the concept of believing that this day that we have deemed the beginning of the year holds any sort of special power has always seemed silly to me. Time has always held so little meaning to me, only acting as a measurement of convenience, but holding little weight beyond the hefty pressure that others put on it.
The idea that this random day that we have deemed important somehow signifies a time for new commitments always feels especially futile in wake of the fact that too often that I see people making their resolutions and then breaking them within the first week or two of the year. A day of skipping the gym leads to a week away from it, and eventually cancelling your new membership altogether. Deciding that you don't have to spend that much time reading from your stack of books leads to those very books collecting dust from never being moved. The pattern continues.
Then there is all of the innumerable toxic ideas that surround this holiday. I have too many times been witness to my loved ones being determined to accomplish something so so specific and then feeling like failures when they fall short. I have watched my friends wilt under when they measure their success and worth by whether they appropriately honor the made-up importance of a meaningless day. I have listened to those I love centering their confidence around a specific date, often leading to negativity targeted at themselves, feeling worthless and incompetent, and eventual apathy towards aspects of life that they once held with such reverence and excitement. Mental and emotional health seem especially fragile during this time of year as people must face their limits, their sense of self, and their varying capacities for meeting their goals.
It is easy to see why I have always felt so little dedication or care for the New Year and the apparent "opportunities for change" that is affords to my peers. Recently, however, the prospect of making changes in my life, the idea of finding ways to better myself in order to improve my overall existence, has begun to be more appealing. Perhaps it is my own mental health improving, and my subsequent thirst for that further healthiness that I have seen in others. Perhaps it is the rising confidence, the sense of pride and self-worth that has given me a voice where I was previously silent. Or the heightened motivation that I have had to pursue the betterment of myself. My own growing capacity for feeling my own emotions so deeply where before there was only an endless well of grey nothing has had the unexpected and welcome side effect of allowing me to also feel more deeply the emotions of other people (a newfound sense of empathy that I will address in a later article). Perhaps it is something else altogether.
No matter its source, I feel within me the desire to ride the momentum of my recent improvements, and the New Year does feel as though it suddenly holds more weight than before. And this weight feels more positive, more like an opportunity than a duty, more like propulsion than pressure. I feel suddenly like participating in a resolution will be less like a painful facade to keep up for the approval of others and more like an act of self-love.
Perhaps that is what the New Year is supposed to be about. Perhaps, like I have found in so many other aspects of life, my own fears and the shallow pressures of a society that I have never felt a part of have been what is tainting this holiday. Maybe New Year's resolutions don't have to be toxic, don't have to be painful and laden with disappointment and poisoned with the perception of one's own false sense of failure.
Maybe this year, we can turn these resolutions into something really worthy of the celebration that we give them. Maybe we can continue to celebrate our little accomplishments and miracles. Maybe we can make this holiday into one of hope for betterment, rather than one of judgements for failure.
