Ever since I was very young, I remember making making New Year's resolutions. I would often make lists and lists of things I wanted to accomplish in the next 365 days: be healthier, read more books, save money, practice honesty, and other lofty goals that I thought would make me a better person. Like most people’s New Year's resolutions, these lists and aspirations were forgotten by February.
Because of this, most people these days seem very anti-New Year's resolutions. It’s a popular opinion that these resolutions are worthless and pointless and most people I know don’t make them at all.
But isn’t there something really beautiful about becoming new at midnight on the first of the year? Isn’t the thought of a clean slate, a fresh start and a new beginning so freeing and possibility-filled? Isn’t it amazing to think that at the stroke of a clock, you have the opportunity to better yourself in a way that you never saw the space for earlier in the year?
Now, just because resolutions are a beautiful thought does not make them realistic. We tend to overshoot. The most popular resolutions are to lose weight, to keep a clean house and to save more money. It’s easy to make resolutions that strive for a perfect household and a perfect you. But, unfortunately, this isn’t realistic. We have no idea what a messy and complicated year is ahead on January 1st. Your weight will fluctuate. Your house will be messy. You’ll overspend money. It’s inevitable, and it leaves us feeling like failures. This sense of failure eventually leads to the conclusion that there’s no point to making resolutions at all.
What if, instead, we kept the idea of the blank slate of a new year, but instead of striving for perfection, we resolved to simply love more? Or to forgive or to take more chances or to keep a more positive attitude at work? Even if this means only taking a few steps towards your goal throughout the year, I know I’d rather look back at a year where I worked to love others more than a year that I cleaned my room twice.
So, maybe, make a New Year's resolution. Don’t make a list- choose just one thing. Write it down. Keep it in a place you’ll see it every day. Tell your friends about it. You might forget about it by February and that’s okay. If you spend only January trying to better your soul, that’s better than nothing.
Or, maybe, it’ll stick. Maybe, in a year, when you’re counting down to midnight, you’ll look back at a year where you strove to be better- whatever that means for you. Maybe you’ll smile and instead of feeling like a failure, you’ll feel like someone who tried and is still trying.
I think that’s a risk worth taking. Don’t you?
