Among all the words we use each year, the ones we choose when making New Year’s resolutions must be the least convincing.
Let us be fair-minded enough to accept that when written, or more likely uttered, these declarations of good intentions generally pass the test of sincerity. We really want to be stronger, fitter or kinder, or less irritable and selfish, and hope everyone else notices our efforts. But as anyone with knowledge of life is fully aware, most pledges stand little chance of being observed.
Richard Wiseman, a British psychologist, once conducted a survey of more than 3,000 people – a far higher sample than opinion polls I have encountered – and found that nearly nine Britons in every 10 (88 per cent) who made resolutions soon broke them.
There is no need to be either a psychologist or a statistician to recognise the probable accuracy of that finding. Among the more common resolutions, giving up smoking was one I made annually throughout my years as a smoker, only to find myself gasping for a cigarette – and succumbing to the urge – at an embarrassingly early stage of each January.
Think in terms of hours rather than days and you will understand what I mean by embarrassing.
When, finally, I succeeded in abandoning the nasty, harmful but annoyingly pleasurable habit, it was because a chest infection had made it physically painful to smoke for long enough to allow the initial yearning to pass.
I have never regretted that life-changing decision even though it led to 25 years of recurring dreams about taking it up again and quickly becoming addicted for a second time.
As a child, I would often resolve to study harder.
The avoidance of a different kind of pain, the sort inflicted by teachers of the era, had more than a little to do with it.
Yet I still managed to break the resolution and, as surely, face the consequences of putting obsessions with football, pop music or even trainspotting ahead of schoolwork.
These personal experiences illustrate the mundane nature of most New Year’s resolutions. They invariably involve changes of behaviour we wish to make or, perhaps more usually, others feel we should aim for.
According to some United States research, the number of resolution-makers grew from one in four as the Second World War loomed to two in five by the turn of the century.
What good it does might usefully be the subject of follow-up study: lose weight, be more conscious in our daily lives of the environment, button the lips when sharp words are about to escape. Formal resolutions are hardly needed to persuade us of the virtues of eating sensibly, thinking more greenly or being less grumpy. Some of us could do with weekly reminders.
History grants loftier precedents. Once Christmas was over, medieval knights would take the “peacock vow”, reaffirming a commitment to chivalry.
Had I been more diligent at school, I might well know whether the knights kept to their word. Or, indeed, how many ancient Babylonians at the root of this tradition broadly kept to a solemn promise to their gods to return borrowed goods and pay off all debts. Reflecting on books never returned and past loans that took an age to refund, I suspect many did not.
With midnight on December 31 just a few days away, the wisest approach to New Year’s resolutions speaks for itself. We should all resolve to make none at all and simply try to be better human beings. But I do resolve to wish readers of The National a happy and healthy 2016.
Colin Randall is a former executive editor of The National
