Did you make any New Year's resolutions?
The tradition of making new year’s resolutions dates back over 4,000 years. Historians believe that the first people to make New Year’s resolutions are also the first recorded people to celebrate a “new year” at all - the Babylonians. During a 12-day festival at the start of planting season in mid-March, they would make promises to their gods - which were usually about returning objects to their rightful owners.
Fast forward to Rome in 46 B.C. when emperor Julius Caesar tinkered with the calendar and established January 1st as the beginning of the new year.In ancient Rome, January 1st was an occasion to honor the two-faced god Janus through offerings, feasts and promises to behave more virtuously.
According to a recent CBS poll, more than a third of people say they’re making New Year’s resolutions this year, which is down from 43% last year. One thing that hasn’t changed are the types of resolutions people make. I used to make resolutions that would be fully unraveled by the last week of January. The top five resolutions are to save more money, exercise more, eat healthier, spend more time with family and friends, and to lose weight. I am pretty sure I have unsuccessfully resolved to do all of these things over the years.
By and large these kinds of resolutions are not really commitments to change. Many times they seem to be nothing more than public statements that generate chatter and attention and are often more aspirational than true intentions. There is nothing wrong with any of these, but do you see a pattern here? Each and every one of them is self-oriented and does little to address the larger problems we are facing as a species.
Honestly, who in the world cares if I lose weight, or work out, or work harder, or quit drinking or smoking? As Roger Rosenblatt wrote recently in an op-ed in the New York Times, “It’s your choice, your life. Your little life. Meanwhile, the world — the whole tortured, self-destructive, polarized, endangered, extraordinary world — spins on.”
He continues, “What if, instead of planning our exercise regimens, we focused our intentions on all that is undesirable in human activity — wars, bigotry, brutality, the despoiling of the earth — and sought to address it? What if instead of making a milquetoast resolution, we made airtight commitments?”
I think he has a point here. If you are truly committed to making positive and constructive changes, a specific date such as January 1st is not necessary. Any day can do. The promise of new beginnings is powerful and, it turns out, not entirely metaphorical.Researchers from the Wharton School of Business called it “the fresh start effect”- when the passage of time is clearly demarcated by “temporal landmarks,” the mind creates new “mental accounting periods” that “relegate past imperfections to a previous period, induce people to take a big-picture view of their lives, and thus motivate aspirational behaviors.”
The start of a new year can function as one such temporal landmark, but so too can the start of a new week. “It’s not like there’s something magical about December 31st,” Charles Duhigg, a former Times reporter and the author of “The Power of Habit,”wrote in 2018. “What is magical is our mind’s capacity to create new narratives for ourselves, and to look for events as an opportunity to change the narrative.”
There are plenty of problems that need to be addressed, so finding one that you can work on shouldn’t be hard to do. I for one am going to continue to work towards making my little corner of the world a better place for everyone. I am going to continue to volunteer with Loaves & Fishes, to provide food vouchers for those in need. I am excited at the prospect of serving as a Tree Board member for Macomb and am looking forward to making our town a greener place to live. As we enter an election year, I am going to continue working with the McDonough County League of Women Voters. I will help register voters, fight against disinformation, assist in increasing voter turnout and help to inform the public about the candidates running for office at the local, regional, state, and national level.
It may not seem like much, but when individuals band together to work towards a common goal, change can happen.
What will you do to make the world a better place for us all?
Heather McIlvaine-Newsad is a Professor of Anthropology at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on collaborative action for sustainability.
The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the university or Tri States Public Radio.
Diverse viewpoints are welcomed and encouraged.
