New Years are getting old

Emily Bruzzo
 Editor-in-Chief

Sometimes, I wish there were an app for telling the future. Really, I’m no different than those poor souls who threw their money at charlatans in the 1800s, or those lost fools who pick up the phone and call the 1-800 number leading them to their destinies. I can’t judge, though; I am desperate for the future not to take me by surprise at least once in my life, too.

As we welcome the New Year, the future is unavoidable; it is this haunting presence, always looming over us but never courteous enough to reveal its secrets. Dickens was onto something with the characterization of his Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. I find that the New Year, and the clumsy, half-hearted resolutions that accompany it, is just one big, lousy attempt at crystal ball reading. How are we any different from the gypsy when we sit at the dinner table — our pants leaving imprints on our flesh from their suffocating tightness — and declare to our family and friends what will be over the coming year. Our predictions are as superficial and manipulative as the Ouija Board’s answer when we ask it if our pants will ever fit again.

Do you know the reason resolutions are destined to fail? Because in submitting the resolution, we assign undue reverence to the glorified New Year. Yes, reverence is indeed the phenomenon. We practically worship it, the New Year. It becomes like a messiah promised to us. The romanticism of “new beginnings” and “starting fresh” is almost too much to bear; and we can’t help but bask in that ever-gratifying sensation of awe that we experience when we just think of all the possibilities.

This is precisely what dooms our resolutions from the start.

We’re not vowing to shed those fifty pounds because our cholesterol is too high and we’d like to be around for our daughter’s wedding; those positive effects are really just afterthoughts. Instead, our promise to lose the weight is more a product of the assurance we give ourselves that a New Year is “new” and therefore something about it must be different — such as our BMI. Somehow, we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking the newness of a New Year guarantees, well, something new. But nothing is guaranteed; remember that when corporate America tries to sell you its “money-back guarantee” load of phooey.

See, resolutions tank because the order of operations is all wrong. Opposed to “wanting” that life change first, and “believing” it is possible second, the warped fantasy of New Year logic that our desired changes will come about with the ease of a busty girl crying her way out of a speeding ticket just because we have a clean slate with which to work removes any sensibility from the equation.

We “believe” the great New Year change is possible, and then only after our faith in the possibility of our self-prediction — our faith in the newness of, and therefore difference in, the New Year — do we find a way to muster the strength to “want” the change.

I’m of the opinion that “wanting” should be the antecedent to “believing” — not the other way around. We should want to believe in something; whether it’s weight loss or terminating our Amazon Prime subscription, we should feel “want” before we experience “belief.” We don’t want to believe in our New Year’s resolutions; we believe that we want them. What good is belief in something if it doesn’t stem from the want for it to be true or possible?That’s why the Church’s formula has begun to run its course in this age of secularism; but that is a tangent best left for another day, I think.

The point of my ramblings is simple, really: Don’t fall victim to New Year lunacy. This latest cycle of 365 days that will make 2016 doesn’t amount to a “new” year. There is nothing “new” about a New Year; instead, there is something “continued” about it. After all, the realities of December 31st don’t just fade away with the drop of a ball, the strike of midnight, and the tongue of a stranger lodged down your throat. You still consumed too much pumpkin pie and ham; your pants still don’t fit; the United States is still policing the world; the ice caps are still melting; mass casualty gun violence is still a threat; nuclear non-proliferation is still a quixotic chimera. Even with the cynicism of my examples, I nevertheless find the phenomenon of continuation ever more uplifting than that of starting over. Continuing a story, no matter the bleakness that once defined it, demonstrates our resolve. Continuation doesn’t mean going in the same direction; it means moving past those things that require we conquer them in our lives.

Some of you readers will deem me a pessimist; I argue I’m the most optimistic among you.

In conclusion, I leave you with these parting thoughts: New Years are not different books; no, they are simply chapters in the same book. And it is a book in which we are all characters, subject to a shared plot shaped by that great “universal thump,” as Melville liked to call destiny — or perhaps it was anti-destiny; I’ve never been sure; “Moby-Dick” has always assuredly been above my reading comprehension level. Either way, it all comes down to the Future and that unfortunate truth that humankind is nothing but an impuissant lot, mere mortals defenseless against the Future’s inevitability.

Though it seems to consume me these days — especially as graduation approaches — I’ve always felt a special sort of antipathy toward the future. It’s not really real, the future isn’t. It’s just this unreachable abstraction, and the efforts to make it a reality are of the ceaseless, wearying, soul-breaking kind.

An eye on the future is an eye that’s forgotten to blink. I’m not certain what that means, but it sounds reminiscent of a fortune cookie, and some of the greatest wisdom I’ve received has come to me through those famed slips of crumby proverbs, so I must be onto something.

Though I detest them and criticize the practice of making them with the vigor of a Fox News commentator, I’ve finally settled on what my resolution will be this New Year: To stop chasing after new years. I’m going to try my darndest to get a handle on the old year first before I tackle the new one.

So concludes my second resolution, which is to stop making resolutions.