Like many, I greatly enjoy the anticipation of Christmas, sometimes rather more than the event itself: the crisp dark nights illuminated with Christmas lights; joining friends from church for our annual carols by candlelight service; the all-pervasive smell of cinnamon and pine needles. But as the memory of Christmas begins to fade for another year and new year’s celebrations light up the midnight sky, I feel a strange compulsion to reflect on the past year, its highs and inevitable lows, and question how I might do things differently in the year ahead. Of course, new year’s resolutions are far from new, as the retail sector knows only too well: the manager of a local sports shop recently informed me that almost 80% of their sports equipment, such as weights and exercise bikes, are sold during the month of January. Yes, I am embarrassed to say that I too had fallen prey to the new year’s fitness bug which, like the mayfly, briefly emerges once a year in a manic flurry of activity only to crash and burn without a trace. Of course, I tell myself that this year will be different and that, with the help of an exercise bike and a certain amount of accountability in the form of my wife, I will finally begin to repair the fractured relationship I have developed with the bathroom scales.
So why do we engage with new year’s resolutions when reason tells us that we are unlikely to be miraculously transformed on 1 January into the people we have always longed to be? Perhaps the start of a new year taps into a sense of dissatisfaction with life, giving ample voice to the internal critic that is quick to tell us that things not only could but should be different. There is something very compelling about drawing an arbitrary line in the sand in order to embark on a new beginning. After all, who would not want to wipe the slate clean and dispense with the failures of the past?
But while new year’s resolutions may make good servants, they can so easily become overbearing and unforgiving masters. For me there is always the temptation to list every way in which I would like my life to be different in one overwhelming document that risks sensory overload: it’s a document that I dread to revisit during the course of the year for fear that it will serve merely as a testament to my consistent under-achievement! And so, upon much reflection, my most important new year’s resolution this year has been to discard new year’s resolutions altogether and replace them with a single new year’s priority instead: the one thing I wish to be different this time next year, in addition of course to greater fitness. So what is it I have decided to prioritise in 2023? Well maybe that will have to remain private since, when it comes to accountability, you can definitely have too much of a good thing!
(Image courtesy of Anthony da Cruz and Unsplash)