Why Make a New Year’s Resolution? (An Existential Take)

We meet the lights in the sky with our eyes open wide; we crane our necks for whichever direction the short lived explosions will meet the darkness. We make noise; we blast our horns.  We celebrate- saying goodbye to the old year and meeting the new one.

But that is only half the story.

Because deep inside, we are also jolted by another noise, another light albeit not as fancy as the ones we see, not as loud as the ones we hear. But it is just as heavy as the food, leaves a hangover like the booze.

This comes from knowing that another year has passed, whether we believe in time or not, whether we regard age as just a number. We know, we know that another year has passed.

And we either celebrate this knowledge or we sleep on it.

For many, a new year’s resolution is akin to the fireworks display.  This “list” of commitments brimming with optimism is the way for many to internalize and celebrate the passing and the coming of the year.

If only we could hear all these words, it will be a cacophony of high flying and loud promises. There will be a mental sky where we could all see and here these words flying and making noise- lighting the sky saying:

“this is the year that I will finally be health conscious, I will smoke less, I will exercise more often, I will study more, I will be a better person, I will swear less, I will finally take that exam, I will finish my studies, I will be a better man, a better woman, blah blah blah”

Is it just that? short-lived fireworks display? One night of revelry followed by a whole day of sleeping and a gradual slipping back into reality that those are just fireworks: ephemeral lights that would soon, like everything else disappear into the darkness of the sky.

Yet we persist.

Because these momentary delights are steeped in a cycle for a reason: they serve to awaken us.  Don’t we make noise to keep us and others awake, so that for whatever reason we end and begin years with sound and fury?

Don’t we shock the dead to bring them back to life? Because for sure, being human and all our commitment to our resolutions would be put to the test, and chances are we will fail. The end of the year and the resolution- its celebration could possibly jolt us back to whichever action we have chosen to do the previous year. Did we fail them? Did we not?

Discipline like motivation is fueled not only from within but from without. Monks have their mantras, soldiers their codes. We set our alarms clocks, make to do lists and post them on our phones, desktops and fridgedoors,  some in tradition see tattoos more than just ornaments, they remind and mean something.

So yes, we make these declarations because they will tell us that we have failed again: we need to make them again. Or we have succeeded: we have to make new ones.

(Dear reader, you can choose to stop reading now.)

When I was young student, there was a phrase I kept hearing from my fellow students who found themselves unwillingly elected as classroom officers. They would begin their acceptance speech in this manner:

“I will not make promises because promises are meant to be broken”, a statement quite similar to when someone tells you before they smoke certain substances (in front of you) “ do not judge me”

Both are admissions to a lack of responsibility. This is understandable coming from young students and junkies because they are never really considered fully responsible for their actions.

But a guy named Sartre has something to say about responsibility.

For him, we are like actors who are also thrust unwillingly into a stage. In this stage called “life” there are no pre-written roles to tell us who we are and no scripts to tell us what to do. There is no one and nothing (not even a god) that we can look up to, we have only ourselves and how we live this life will define who we are. In his now famous words, Sartre said “existence precedes essence”.

Everything is a choice. Yours and no one else’s. No one is telling you whether you should continue reading this or not. How you are going to live this new year is also your choice.

In effect, Sartre’s philosophy places responsibility for ones actions  squarely on one’s own shoulders. I can only blame myself for wanting to drink 2x2 all the time, I can’t blame all the stressors. It is as it always will be my choice. 

And just like those young officers, we act as if we represent others, how we see ourselves as human beings and our capacity to keep or break promises is a subtle message to how we see others.  We can never tell anyone not to judge us. It is their choice.

We can see that the New Year’s resolution is something that could bring us closer to an essence, however contradictory this sounds, an essence that is to be written by us and no one else.