Many people make “New Year resolu­tions” — a whole bunch of things they will or will not do once the new year begins. For some, this is a fine arrange­ment. I’m not one of them.

The main problem with such resolu­tions is that if it is a partic­u­larly tough one to imple­ment, a single lapse will lead to dejec­tion and despair. For instance, a regular smoker who decides to quit smoking as a “New Year resolu­tion”, if persuaded to smoke even once after­ward, will revert to his old habits. The fact that smoking is addic­tive has nothing much to do with it. The general plaint goes thus —

“I wanted to quit, but I had a weak moment — how does it hurt if I do it twice instead of once? In any case, the deed is done and I have failed…”

The best part is that despair and dejec­tion are used as a cloak to justify the act.

It would probably be far better to have resolu­tions on a day-to-day basis; at least we could start afresh any time we wanted. In some cases, a gradual phasing out is likely to be more effective.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 29th, 2005 at 02:17 and is filed under Daily Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.