Resolving New Year’s Resolutions

How far into the New Year do you progress before you stop greeting people with “Happy New Year”? Is it two weeks? The end of January? Valentine’s Day?

I like the practice. We’re all here together, at the threshold of the year that will be. It’s like we’re all co-owners of this new house called 2024, and we’re saying “Welcome!” to one another. How will we furnish it in the months ahead?

Some of us are a week into our New Year’s resolutions, perhaps already congratulating ourselves for sticking to whatever it is we resolved. I’m of two minds about resolutions. I like the idea of declaring an intention to make a change. I deplore the idea of setting myself up to fail.

My policy on New Year’s resolutions is that they shouldn’t be too punishing and they shouldn’t be too grand. We often use a resolution as a cudgel, as a method to get ourselves back in line, a means of eradicating the parts of ourselves we don’t like. David Sedaris has written about how, every New Year’s Eve, he had watched his mother scribbling furiously on a bunch of index cards. After her death, he discovered that she’d written the same thing on each one: “Be good.”

That’s a good encapsulation of all resolutions, isn’t it? Be good. Resolutions tend to be freighted with the implication that the way you are now is not good, or at least not good enough. My resolutions are typically of this variety: self-criticism disguised as self-improvement. Get in shape; stop your profligate spending; be nicer; work harder. If your resolution seems architected by someone who doesn’t like you, there’s still time to reconsider it.

My resolution this year is to, whenever possible, shop in person instead of online. I like this resolution because it lines up with other objectives I have concerning my finances, community, sustainability, simplicity. And it’s not totally about me, so it feels a little less dreary and narcissistic than typical resolution fare. It’s also less ambitious, which I hope means that I’m less likely to abandon it.