Given that it's going to be a new year soon, I suppose it's tradition to think of a New Years resolution. Some way that I can better myself, or make things better for the people around me.
For instance, I could pledge to lose weight, because I'm not thin. Or, I could resolve to swear less while driving, after letting out a five-minute long string of words at an errant driver, the only one which is printable here is "the". I could do all those things in 2012, because what better time to do that then January?
It's a thought that lots of people have. For instance, a former grocery store produce manager I know said that every January sales of salads and other healthy things shoot up, as people decide to eat healthier. So clearly we should all be just like those healthy folks who are buying up the salads, being better people than we were in 2011, or maybe just slightly thinner.
That's fine, but I neglected to include the second part of what she told me. While the healthy greens might suddenly get popular in January, it doesn't take very long before the sales level off and people return to eating exactly how they were eating before, as the thrill of a new resolution wears off. In effect, it never works, because at the end of the day such resolutions don't carry any weight.
I say this because if you genuinely want to improve yourself, you don't wait until the new year to make a resolution, you just do it.
Want to eat healthier? Just start, right now, today. Same deal with my foul mouth, if I genuinely wanted to stop swearing at people who drive in a manner I don't approve of, I could theoretically do it at any time.
The thing with New Years resolutions is you don't actually want to improve yourself in the ways you decide, you just want to say you will because it's a tradition and it's nice idea in theory. But, since you're doing it out of a desire to fit with a tradition rather than something you genuinely want, the pledge never actually sticks.
I'm not saying people can't improve themselves, I know many people who have. I know people - including myself - who have seen things in their lives and have decided to improve them, whether it was quitting a bad habit, taking on a new hobby or just being better people in any other way.
The thing is, they're doing it because they want to, and are beginning to do it when they want to. Sometimes that coincides with New Years, sometimes that will happen on a completely arbitrary date. Sure, there might be trends - it is remarkable how many big decisions I've made in March - but it's all because they want to do it, not because they have to.
That's why New Years resolutions are for suckers. You're not doing it out of genuine desire, but instead out of a sense of obligation. It's New Years, so of course you have to make a resolution, that's just how the tradition works. It fails because you inevitably don't really want to make the change, and eventually everyone forgets it anyway so you can revert to your bad habits again.
This isn't to say New Years resolutions can't work, but if they do they would work if you decided to do it on July 12. It's all about genuine desire to change, and if you don't actually want to change it won't work. Thus, I'll be swearing for many years to come.
