New Year(s)

Well, I certainly hope that my New Year will go more smoothly than at the lead up and start, when I spent several hours at Heathrow Terminal 2, was eventually shunted on to another flight, faced further delays and eventually reached my destination (never you mind, nosey!) well into the morning of the 1st day of 2017.

Now why is it that we have such high hopes when January 1st comes around? Why do we think that the world, or our bit of it anyway, will improve just because the New Year has come around?Why did we not think the same on December 27th, for example, or any other day? Then again, what makes every diet 'start on Monday' or some other day in the future, near or far, but not here and now? Hard to say, isn't it, other than allowing us the opportunity to dither further, change our mind, defer, delay, postpone and ultimately even cancel. Grown up we may be - I am, anyway - but there's a little bit of us that remains forever childish and indecisive, even when we know that we must, absolutely, do something.

'New Year's Resolution' is virtually always an abused term, describing something that is either never started and almost certainly never seen through, a pipe dream of sorts. We determine to be healthier, wiser, less greedy, more sober, better people, to help others, be kind to our families and fellow humans/animals/the environment/everyone; oh how virtuous we feel at that point! Yet soon after we are willing to forget all this, temporarily we think, other things being more pressing, only until next week/month when the omens will be better... Hah!

So every year starts with the 'out with the old in with the new' mentality, with optimism that the good things will be triumphant in our lives, only to slowly renege on this and back away as 'nothing can change anyway' and 'what will be will be'. In short, we lack willpower (myself not excluded) to see our resolutions through, so we allow the bad things (the things that needed changing/improving) within and without us to continue. Should this be so?

A wise man (M. Scott Peck in 'The Road Less Travelled', but probably others too) once wrote that 'love is not effortless, love is effort-full', and the same can be applied to life in general and, most certainly, to any life worth living. Often this can be hard, swimming against the tide, requiring sacrifices in order to achieve the desired outcome, so we relax and go with the flow instead which is much easier. And we like an easy life, not the effort-full nonsense, we like relaxed; there is little 'cost' to go with relaxed so why should we strain ourselves?

This would all be less absurd if it didn't happen every year with monotonous regularity. The resolutions that singularly failed to be implemented last year (or the year before, or the one before that etc. etc.) are going to come true THIS time for sure; we are determined. Not like last year, or the year before etc. etc., but REALLY determined. But of course we are, dear boy, of course we are...

I now stop myself from making resolutions, new year or other, about anything, or almost, on the basis that it is futile; something always gets in my way so it will never happen... what about you? Do you still lay down plans on the 1st of January? Do you stick to them? Hah!

Come on, let's make this year different to the ones before, skip the resolutions but actually get out and do things to help people, and ourselves. Don't announce it to anyone, not even to yourself, just get on and do things: lose/gain weight, do something that benefits others, travel to unknown places, change jobs, change the world.

Happy 2017, make it worthwhile, truly memorable.