New Year, New Me

It happens every year. As another year ends, and a new one begins, the world gets flooded with reflections and resolutions, all hinting towards the same thing: new year, new me.

I know. It can get annoying. There are enough memes making the rounds of the online world to communicate the same. And I don’t blame them.

Resolutions are exciting the first few times. But after years and years of failure, they’re just downright repetitive and annoying.

Or that’s what I like to tell myself.

You see, secretly, I kind of enjoy it. Perhaps not the public declarations of resolutions (because that’s not really my style), but at least, I like the idea behind resolutions.

It’s hope.

Let’s face it. We live in a world that on more days than not, is rather depressing. To add on to that, most of us (at least, I’m hoping it’s most of us) fail miserably at our yearly resolutions, probably within the first few days of January.

Yet as the next year rolls around, we’re at it again.

Why? Are we just idiotic humans who don’t know when to give up? Probably. But I prefer to think of it a little differently; that we’re people who, despite facing failure after failure, somehow find it in ourselves to get back into the rink and give it another try, hoping, that maybe this time will be better than the last.

And that’s kind of inspiring.

Of course, we don’t really need a ‘new year’ to do this, but I think humans like checkpoints. New Year’s. Birthdays. Or, in my case, sunsets. Something that makes you pause, look back at your life, take stock of it, and think for a moment about what it is really that you want. It’s the checkpoint to reflect on ourselves as people, and use the new year as an excuse to try and (hopefully) be better people.

Sure, many of us will fail. Fail badly. But maybe this is one of those things where the end result, as important as it might be, takes a backseat in favour of the attempt.

Where showing up is far more important than winning.