We’ve all made them. For many of us, they have something to do with eating healthier/putting away those goldfish crackers (but dangit, they’re so yummy!), exercising/going to the gym more (it’s right by my house, for goodness sakes!), spending more quality time with family and/or friends and just appreciating the people in our lives (even that obnoxious neighbor/classmate/coworker), and living in the moment (or something like that).
I have never bothered too much with the whole resolution-making tradition. I’ve really only come up with solid, specific promises when I’ve been forced to (for example, in polite conversation, or in class on the first day back at school after break, etc.), and I don’t even remember the resolutions I’ve ended up deciding on. Part of this probably stems from the fact that I’m very content with who I am as a person and have never necessarily felt like I needed to drastically or significantly improve myself. But I’ve also questioned every year the apparent magic that people associate with this moment—the moment of the new year—and this particular opportunity to make a promise to oneself.
For one thing (and I know I’ll sound super cynical, but oh well), so many people don’t seem to bother keeping the resolutions they make, to the point that we’ve resorted to trying tiny resolutions that don’t actually make much of a difference anyway, or to making extremely general promises that we can fulfill in the smallest possible way and still check off that box, giving ourselves that pat on the back. But, to me, that’s part of the problem right there; if all we really crave is that pat on the back, that warm and fuzzy reassurance about the goodness of our characters when we accomplish what we said we would, we’re not actually bettering ourselves that much because we’re still doing it for kind of the wrong reasons. Can we try to resolve to help out at the local food bank because we actually care most about helping other people rather than because we yearn to feel good about ourselves for ostensibly caring about other people?
I don’t, by any means, intend to imply that the people who make resolutions like these are all phonies and secretly selfish, shallow people. I’ve just observed a tendency among some people who do make resolutions to make these philanthropic/do-something-good type of resolutions, which is great, but those who seem to make them for primarily self-involved reasons pretty much defeat the point of those resolutions in the first place.
I have also always wondered why this moment, the beginning of a new calendar year, seems to be the only time people stop and reflect on their lives and on themselves as human beings. I understand that this is an easy time to stop and have this reflection, because it’s the most visible marker of the passage of time, but it’s also so arbitrary that I wish people wouldn’t so often treat it as the only, the truly special, time to make strong resolutions. I wish we would set aside more times for ourselves to reflect throughout the year, not just when we feel forced to by the reminder that the world is aging and we're running out of time each year to improve ourselves and our lives.
And there you go, my cynical take on New Year’s! Now, if you so desire, go make some resolutions.
