I hate New Year's resolutions.
I hate them because people don't keep them. I hate them because people act like all it takes for them to be a new person is for 11:59 to become midnight. A stroke on the clock and voila, a new me!! I hate them because "everyone is doing it". Much the same way I refused to read Harry Potter or Twilight (at first) because I don't like when people ride the wave of the masses in to shore.
Resolutions, I like. I like when a person decides one dreary day in October to start exercising more, or to mail a letter to someone far away, once a week. I enjoy when a dad resolves, one hot August morning, to spend more time in the pool with the kids and less time at the office. I think life is a continuity of new resolutions. That's growth. And that's real. Because it happened when no one was expecting it, or probing them about it, or posting Facebook status updates and polls about what they should do.
But, at the start of a new year, resolutions are forbidden for me. No one is at a place of quiet reflection at the start of a new year anyway, and a place of peace and clarity is where resolutions should sprout from. We are catching our breath, loosening our belts from too much holiday food, and balancing the checkbook for the hundredth time as we marvel at how we afforded to buy all that good stuff after all. So I say, enjoy the fun, frenzy, fireworks, and spirit of hope and expectation that a new year brings. Drink some champagne, and kiss at the stroke of midnight.
The resolutions can wait until one quiet morning, maybe in March, when the perfect idea strikes.
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