Are New Year’s resolutions a waste of time?

A virtuous new leaf, or just a way to make January even worse...

‘We give up things that make life worth living’ ‘It doesn’t hurt to admit we could be better, nicer’

YES

COMe on, we all knowit. It is a truth universally acknowledged (in my house, anyway) that I can’t stick to anything, and therefore resolutions are like rules: made to be broken.

For example, I decided to become a vegan in November. Let me make one thing crystal clear — deciding to eschew all animal-based products is the easy part. Doing so is far harder.

Having grandly announced this penitential dietary change in advance of the festive season, I arrived to spend Christmas in scotland with 30 members of my husband’s clan just as a honey-roast ham was being prepped for dinner.

My hostess and sister-in-law handed me a red pepper and said, ‘stuff it’, and Reader, I did. I stuffed veganism two hours after my arrival and rebadged myself as a ‘flexitarian’, to general hilarity and derision.

One of the consolations of advancing age is greater self-knowledge, and therefore this year I have determinedly not set myself a challenge, such as Veganuary or Dry January, that I know in advance I’m going to fail.

Resolutions are doomed at the outset, as they tend to centre on giving up the very things that make life worth living, such as chocolate, cheese or Chardonnay. even thinking about giving up cheddar makes me break out in a cold sweat.

Having said that, I like the 1970s notion of ‘Janu-hairy’ (as proposed by Nessa in the Gavin & stacey Christmas special). Given the fashionability of rewilding our gardens and public lands — it’s a storyline in the archers, and the book of 2019 was Wilding by Isabella tree — why don’t women start at home and ‘rewild’ our own bodies? You don’t even have to do anything.

But, no, instead of making resolutions, I’ve determined on a new direction for the decade. I am going into the 2020s with thumper’s quote from Disney’s Bambi at the top of my mind: ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.’

the next bit of our island story will, I hope, be about unity, not division; about healing, not warring; about respect, not abuse. I want to detoxify and de-escalate personal and public discourse. If I see a snake in my path, I’m not going to kick it, I’m going to step over it.

I am going to make a superhuman effort not to stir the pot, and be nice, not nasty, I promised myself.

‘Does that include me?’ my husband queried when I told him of my plan. I looked at him and my irritation bubbled.

‘No!’ I barked, then realised I had failed before 2020 had even begun.

NO

Dates matter: anniversaries, years, decades. Maybe they shouldn’t, but they measure our life.

the turn of the year for me always stirs up tennyson’s poem commanding the wild bells of 1850 to ring out the old, ring in the new: ‘Ring out the false, ring in the true./... Ring out the want, the care, the sin,/The faithless coldness of the times!’

It speaks to an instinct to turn the page, look forward, cast off guilt and regret. so, yes, resolutions!

Of course they won’t all come true. Of course there will be gyms deserted, teach-yourself books gathering dust, diets broken and bad habits unbroken. We’re not perfect. But it doesn’t hurt to admit, cheerfully, that we could be better, nicer, happier, more generous.

Making resolutions is enlivening — whether they are about a digital detox, a physical one or a financial one (step away from that shopping website, Purves!).

It reminds us we have the option to control ourselves, and to be radiators of warmth rather than sullen storm-drains of depression and selfishness.

For years at this in-between time, my husband Paul and I had a long walk together, called our ‘annual General Meeting’, reviewing the past year and wondering which way to go: house moves; children’s progress; the farm beginning and ending; griefs and victories; jobs and disappointments.

a new decade like this always felt the most interesting to review — ten years single, ten years frantic early parenthood, then school matters and tangles, and two careers rising and falling. How can you do that without making resolutions about where you’ll hope to head in the next one?

I have broken as many as I have made, yet there’s nourishment in knowing what you should do better, and trying, even for a few weeks.

some deniers spoil that for themselves by petulantly deciding that a single hangover, bag of chips or family row has ‘broken’ the spell and made it not worth persevering. Nonsense! the resolution still shimmers up there, like a star for us moths to be drawn to. New Year offers that chance, for free.

Right now we have a new year, a new decade, a new government, a new national task of reuniting and regenerating after some fractious years. tennyson got it right: ‘Ring out false pride in place and blood,/ The civic slander and the spite.’

It won’t be perfect. We’ll all trip up. But it is better than glumly trudging on, ignoring the bells and the magic date. Here’s to us all!