D

ecember has always been quite a ride for me. In school, there were finals. During my corporate years, there were performance reviews. Then there was my birthday, Christmas, Aceh tsunami memorials and New Year'€™s Eve.

Bittersweet memories, crushed hopes, renewed dreams and everything else in between are all entangled and intertwined in the span of 31 days. That I have not turned into an alcoholic whenever December comes to town is an achievement on its own.

But apparently, as I found out recently, it is nothing compared to what some people are anguishing about at this time of the year.

These people, who have no emotion-wrenching birthdays
or tsunami memorial on their schedule I should add, dread
accounting for their previous
New Year'€™s resolutions and agonize over their next resolution.

To add to their misery, enough people are waiting for their failure just to be able to say, '€œSee, New Year'€™s resolutions never work.'€ The tension was so palpable that a Christmas dinner of several seemingly well-adjusted adults was almost ruined by it.

I earnestly admire people who sum up the courage to make a resolution to start, abandon, change or accomplish something once the clock rings in a new year. I salute the ones who actually manage to execute and maintain it '€” I have known friends who went cold turkey on cigs, booze, poker, late-night Oreo snacking or online lingerie shopping (don'€™t ask) and never looked back.

On the other side I respect people who are hell-bent on proving that New Year'€™s resolutions are a hopeless venture. They argue, using stats and neurological studies if they must, that humans cannot change their behavior on calendar cues.

Which one are you? I'€™m somewhere in between. I believe that you can wake up one day and resolutely want to do something in total contrast to however you have done it before. I have done that several times, with a moderate success rate if I may pat myself on the back.

Now, can you do it just because it is January 1st? My own experience shows that all those resolutions were formed only after some life-shattering moments, often of Greek epic proportions, took hold. Perhaps that'€™s what it takes.

Perhaps being an optimistic Sagittarian (or small-eared mule, depending on which parent of mine you'€™re talking to) I do not warm up to a drastic change until it has dramatically exploded itself into my life. It doesn'€™t mean that others can'€™t get motivated to change on cue.

I'€™m neither a sage nor a psychiatrist. But I think that New Year'€™s resolutions, or the fact that they
are even being debated, show that basically human beings long for change and new opportunities.
Evolution must have wired somewhere in our psyche that changes bring a fresh set of possibilities to extend our survival.

In New-Age speak, we need hope to justify leaving our bed every morning and carrying on with our lives. That possibility for a change, or even a promise of it, is what has propelled us out of our cyclical misery and kept us going (unless, of course, you'€™re suffering from clinical depression, in which I beg you to immediately abandon this paper and seek professional counsel).

'€œThere are some 7 billion people on the planet so what'€™s the chance that today is your day?'€ a pal once wryly remarked. True. But if everyone went about their lives with that attitude then nobody would have found courage to rise against slavery, leave an abusive husband, seek a scholarship, finish an opera or conduct the umpteenth clinical trial that finally discovered penicillin. What kind of humdrum existence would that have been?

So, if you'€™re one of those 7 billion souls out there lucky enough to still feel there'€™s a real chance for change come January 1st, go ahead already.

Focus more on keeping your next resolution than worrying about how much you haven'€™t kept your last one. If your last resolution lasted until the 1st of February, making this next one last until the 1st of March will be an achievement
nobody can take away from you.

For those on the opposite side, here'€™s an idea; instead of busily reminding others about how futile New Year'€™s resolutions are, put down those reading materials and go out. Meet new people. Do new things. Go somewhere you haven'€™t been before. Relish the fact that you'€™re superbly rational, yet make room in your heart to allow the foolish hopefuls to wear rose-tinted glasses. Get ready for surprises.

Here'€™s to both of you and everyone else in between. Clink, clink.

'€” Lynda Ibrahim