New Year’s Resolutions? I Resolve Not To!

New Year’s Day is a day famous for resolutions. The day when people work up the courage to swear to permanent change in their lives. To resolve to start doing this, stop doing that, and make some adjustments to these other things. A time for fresh starts.

Now, let’s be honest with ourselves. How many of you have ever kept a resolution all the way through the entire year? If you have, you have my deep and abiding respect. You are a rare breed.

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. I defy this societal concept. No, I’m not being contrary for contrariness’s sake, I just don’t understand the need for it. Why wait until one day out of 365 (or 366) when you can always decide to change TODAY? That is, if you really want to improve yourself. Maybe it’s just more comfortable to say, as little orphan Annie sings, “There’s always tomorrow.” And tomorrow always seems to be such a long time coming.

That being said, it’s all well and good to come up with new goals on New Year’s Day. It’s tempting to look out across the vastness of the new year, all those blank days ripe with promise, and imagine to oneself how this time you’ll do it differently. You’ll be better this year, just wait and see. You make that silent resolution to yourself. On the same day, of course, when everyone parties hard till midnight and carouses and gets drunk and gets into car accidents. A hangover and a car repair bill. An excellent start to the new year.

Some people take resolutions very seriously. And to those people who can keep them throughout the year, I say more power to you. Like I already said, you are a rare breed. Most people make a few half-hearted mentions of a few things in life they want to be different, then forget all about it in a couple weeks (or a couple drinks).

Which isn’t to say that the idea behind New Year’s resolutions is a bad thing. We should always strive to improve ourselves. But maturity and growth is a gradual process, not something that happens in leaps and spurts. It takes a lot of effort to change something about ourselves. We stubbornly cling to bad habits and thoughts because they’ve stuck with us for so long. A single day of swearing off a habit isn’t going to make much difference. You got to work at it every day. You got to practice. Change is slow.

So, I don’t bother with New Year’s resolutions. Why should I, when I can make that resolution any day of the year? Sometimes, I make the same resolution multiple times in a week or a month, because I stumble. We all stumble, especially after making a big show of the big changes in our lives. Life likes to set us up like that. It’s like setting the cute baby seal free into the ocean with cameras rolling and – oh, there’s the shark waiting to spoil the moment.

I will make resolutions as many days as it takes to improve myself for the better and change my bad habits. No one-and-done deals. One day’s quick and easy promises aren’t enough.

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Image: “Fireworks – Adelaide Skyshow 2010” by anthonycramp; Licensed under CC BY 2.0.