Trying, and Lying, to Make a Change

The New Year is a celebration that greatly confuses me. What is everyone so happy about? Human beings know how to count? We can keep track of time? We’ve finally created a calendar that accurately reflects the true motion of the Earth around its Sun and the only proper release for such excitement is to jump up and down in the cold while chanting the first ten numerals in reverse order? Or are we all just so happy that any one of us has survived another arbitrarily defined period of time without complete extinction?

Maybe it’s because life is hard and monotonous and we need any excuse we can get in order to feel like anything can change, that anything will be different, that anything could become “new.” Whatever the Everyman of the United States is nowadays, he or she knows that tomorrow will only bring more of the same factory line or desk chair or unemployment check or food stamps or stress or tiredness that yesterday and today did. So they get excited. And they get happy. And they get drunk. And they say the word “new” a lot. And they watch Jenny McCarthy kiss some strange sailor man during a national television broadcast on ABC.

Happy Whatever the Fuck We’re Doing Here…

Of course this hope for new-ness, the human desire for excitement grinds like nails on a chalkboard against the human need for comfortable routine. And the human wont for routine  has shaped society as much as the human want for excitement.

Perhaps the greatest example of this juxtaposition of human desires is the New Year’s Resolution. The resolution appears in many forms and is made by all members of society. Self-help vultures fill daytime talk shows with vapid books and plans for making the best of a yet-to-be broken New Year’s promise. Exiting politicians imply a promise that, maybe, their replacements might be slightly less incompetent in future terms. People with casual vices spend the last day of the year clearing their homes of their snacks, their smokes or their drinks with the intention of turning over a new leaf just after turning over the page on their calendar.

I wonder what really goes through the mind of a man, middle aged, overweight and addicted to nicotine who thinks to himself in the middle of November about his problematic habits. Sure, he could start exercising now; he could stop smoking now; he could even start eating a few more fruits and vegetables now. But he doesn’t. He waits for the New Year. Because he really thinks that the association of a new four digit number in the date will strengthen his resolve to improve his life.

Or he just doesn’t want to. He really just doesn’t care about making his life better or longer or healthier. He is, in fact, completely fine with the routines he has established for himself.

Most people who make New Year’s Resolutions are lying to themselves. This is fine. We all lie to ourselves every day. The difference is that, generally, the lies we tell ourselves make us feel better. We are safely able to continue telling ourselves that our career success or our happiness in our marriage will improve with time soon because we are able to avoid revealing the lie to ourselves until we retire or until our spouse dies (or finally pulls the trigger and mercy-kills the marriage).

Only then we will understand that each successive promotion only brought more stress and less fulfillment or that every anniversary celebration was only a placid veneer over stormy feelings of discontent. And any evidence to the contrary was merely an invention of our panicked subconscious. But it will be too late then for us to actually become unhappy with our situation.

But, more often than not, New Year’s Resolutions will politely provide us with direct evidence of our failure, with a truth that directly contradicts our lie that change is possible and that this particular goal can be achieved. Cartons of cigarettes and extra pounds are much harder to hide than marital discord or dissatisfaction with a career. Then the floodgates of shame, disappointment and, ultimately, unhappiness open up.

Change is not easy – nor is it even always necessary – no matter how many of Oprah’s disciples parrot Stephen Covey from the self-help pulpits. Make it when you want it; make it when you need it, and not just because you also happened to need a new calendar.