We all look forward to New Year, it’s like a cleansing, yet it begs the question what was so wrong in the previous year that we look so forward to a new year? For most, I’m guessing nothing was wrong in the previous year, but ‘new’ always sounds better than ‘old’ and that’s what we say, “in with the new, out with the old.” What does that even mean? Out with the old what? Ways of thinking, old habits, old traditions, old love? what? Like the “Auld Lang Syne” song, which loosely translates from an old Scottish language to ‘for the sake of old times…’! What’s even funnier is that most of us have no idea what the words to the song are. When you read them, it’s definitely about a past that is gone, but up for debate given all the translations. I think most of us sing it like a song that we think we know but really we’re just making words up and mostly humming along! You can read the history here.
New Year brings in a clean slate. Somehow that magic day of January 1, gives permission to just reboot and start over and it doesn’t discriminate, it doesn’t matter who you are. It let’s us feel like we’ve started a new chapter when really it’s just a new day, but then we get a new day everyday, with the opportunity to start all over, so why don’t we feel the same as New Year makes us feel? Is it the lore, the traditions, the socialization of what it means? We have the opportunity every second of everyday to start over, to think, act and begin all over, no matter what the situation big or small. It can mean an attitude adjustment, or reconnecting with a loved one or maybe something as simple as saying, “today I’m going to [fill in the blank].”
Often New Year is about a resolution of some sort, but according to history that’s a 4,000 year old tradition started by the Babylonians, some of the first recorded to celebrate a new year. Julius Caesar decided to modify the calendar and established January 1 as the beginning of the new year circa 46 B.C. Janus, a two faced God, is who January is derived from, a God that looked back at the past and ahead into the new year. Even in current times, it’s what we still do, but somehow ‘resolution’ has evolved to not pleasing our Gods but still making some change that will have significant benefit to us e.g., health, family, work, habits etc.
Typically the ‘new’ wans quickly as do resolutions because we often make them within the nostalgia of rehashing what we lived in the past year and the desire to do better. I believe that if we truly want resolution we do it daily, we resolve to make changes that are small and steady instead of sweeping and unrealistic. New can be simply be paying it forward, being thankful for your blessings, buying someone a cup of coffee, not eating the daily candy bar, committing to taking a walk around the block and generally just resolving to be better than you were yesterday.
My Two Cents of Sense 