Write a novel, wear brighter colours, be less self-critical, hit 10,000 steps daily, meditate: in years past, I’ve made all these resolutions and more. Some I’ve even accomplished.
Don’t get me wrong—I am to New Year’s Eve revelry what Ebenezer Scrooge is to Yuletide. One of the perks of reaching middle age is that you’re no longer obliged to sign up to elaborate plans that doom you to begin a fresh year stranded on the wrong side of town, dressed in a regrettable impulse-buy, longing for nothing more than your own bed.
Yet even I cannot resist the allure of a clean slate. The new year is an opportunity to turn all the “shoulds” that dog us daily (I should consume less sugar, be a better friend, volunteer more) into can-do affirmations—a chance to send up an admittedly tipsy cheer for hope in its eternal tussle with experience, to believe we each might finally be able to get the heck out of our own way.
But if these public commitments to try harder refute one self-help tenet—to love yourself just as you are (pah!)—they also rely heavily upon another: positive thinking. And let’s face it: when your alarm goes off in the sodden murk of a January dawn, reminding you that you’ve signed up for an al fresco boot-camp class before work, it’s likely to take more than peppy mantras to haul you from your slumber.
Of course, this is a thoroughly unnatural season in which to be thinking of turning over fresh leaves. The shortest day is barely behind us and most of the natural world is lying dormant, yet here we humans are, our determination quickened by the queasy guilt of festive over-indulgence, bent on radical self-improvement regimes that will supposedly leave us lean and keen, radiant of both complexion and soul.
To be fair, the origins of the new year’s resolution lie in Babylonian times, when the timing coincided with the spring equinox, but we moderns don’t exactly help ourselves. All too often, our resolutions are at once confoundingly vague and overly ambitious, inspired by external pressures and tackling effects rather than causes (just why is it that we reach for the Hobnobs every afternoon at three o’clock?).
Unsurprisingly, resolutions tend to be more popular among the young. I’ve definitely noticed my own becoming less ambitious with time. In my thirties it might have been “find love”; last year’s was simply to get my accounts in on time. Dreary though it was, that one should at least have been realisable, according to experts who advise small, specific changes. Reader, I failed.
If the annual refrain of “new year, new you!” is sounding extra hollow this year, it’s likely because the pandemic still has us collectively pining for old ways of being. And even as it’s driven home the importance of resolution staples like maintaining fitness and a healthy weight, Covid has underscored the extent to which so much of life is simply beyond our control.
Here’s the thing, though: even absent the global turmoil caused by a miniscule microbe, statistically only a quarter of people ever stick to all their resolutions. The marvel is that so many of us try again year after year. Short-lived though it generally proves (most resolutions will have bitten the dust by February), that spirit of optimism seems worth clinging to. We just need to speed up the cycle a bit.
With that in mind, here’s my resolution for 2022: to keep on resolving. I know—it’s vague, it’s probably too ambitious. And yes, my step count is already down today, and there’s no way I’m not going to pick holes in this piece just as soon as I’ve sent it off to my editor. But tomorrow is another day, another chance to try again—and you needn’t even stay up late and woo a hangover to claim it.
