In the wake of this new year’s beginning, a girl named Emily sat ruminating on her life–and then, she got up. She went out and ran everyday, and didn’t eat any junk food, not even one measly chocolate bar. She even began to fix her procrastination. And then, it happened: she kind-of-sort-of stopped.

“I think New Year’s resolutions are overrated, especially for me,” Emily Arakawa ‘16 states. “They always fall flat three weeks in. I tried to exercise, eat healthy, and not procrastinate…but no! I gave up and everything, so there goes my New Year’s resolution! I think there’s always potential to go back to it, though. But I always end up failing. I look forward to redeeming myself soon, though… Soon.”

Don’t we all.

How many New Year’s resolutions have been discarded, I wonder, left in the road like crumpled candy wrappers to chase the tail of some stray breeze? Is it not a little rash, a little bullheaded, to assume that we can make monumental personal changes every year? Can we really ask that of ourselves? Can we really ask that of each other?

Ryan Jurewicz ‘17 comments on this – “Are New Year’s resolutions ‘good?’ Sure. Do I think they’ll last the whole year? Of course not. People either shoot too high, or, more likely, people are downright lazy. No matter how dedicated you think you are, no one actually makes it a full year. If you do, good for you! I congratulate you. I know I never make it!”

Is Ryan right? Are those crinkly wrappers nothing but reminders of our own laziness and ignorance? While it is true that a great number of the resolution population die off from the laziness epidemic, I believe there is something more to it.

I find it noble that people make resolutions, admirable that they pursue their aspirations. But I find it rather disheartening that lists must be made, that resolutions must be made, in order for people to strive towards betterment.

Clare Halsey ‘16 agrees: “People constantly wait for a time or opportunity to change instead of taking action right away. Why wait to change your life for the better? If a goal is truly important to a person, then waiting around for a magical date to start reaching for it actually increases complacency and hinders progress.”

And besides, most of the fun is in the voyage, in the unexpected sight of land. Consider the common resolution to improve grades. Grades and quantitative scores are all very well and good, but what of actual learning? Perhaps a revitalization of one’s love for learning may better serve to boost those grades than a study schedule or one more hour spent poring over a textbook, one less in bed. After all, many students lose their childish curiosities in high school, lose them to a schedule filled with effort, yes, but filled with monotony and pressure, as well. A rekindled positive attitude can mean the difference that subtly boosts energy and willingness just enough to make a B+ an -A, and that improves mood and wellbeing, too.

The reality is that monumental personal changes occur with or without our intent. Not a single person reaches January 1st of a new year, looks back on the old one, and thinks, “Man! I am the same person I was last January!” No. Last January 1st, we may have looked down a little more at our toes–or maybe we had looked a little less. We may have weighed more than we do now–or maybe we weighed less. Last January 1st, we may have been considerably unhappy. Maybe we had yet to unearth from within us a new, once-dormant passion. The us of last January 1st is but a ghost of who we are now, an imprint, an echo. Similarities persist, of course, but along the way, as January 1st became February 1st, and later March 1st, and then, suddenly, December 1st, we evolved. And we evolved whether we liked it or not.

Maybe it is rash to resolve to accomplish something over the span of a mere year. But there is something terribly enticing about a new year or a fresh page, and there is something to be said for the determination that simply creating resolutions epitomizes. Yes, maybe it is rash, maybe it is silly, but I will say this: so much can happen in a year. For what is a year, really, but one more foothold found, one more handhold grasped in the clamber up the mountain’s bluff?