2018 - A New Year, but what do we need a new start for?

Only a couple of days have passed since Prosecco bottles were opened and fireworks were decorating the night sky, and the Internet is already flooded with #NewYearNewMe selfies taken in the gym and blog posts with tips that promise to help you make the new year the best so far. As soon as we hit what humans decided to be the beginning of a new year, suddenly we feel this rush of determination and motivation through our body, living the illusion of being more ready than we've been weeks and months prior to this random day of our existence to change bad habits and improve ourselves. In a society that's obsessed with self-development, self-help books and motivational quotes covering every street corner of our lives, it's not surprising that we fetishise to-do lists and almost feel aroused just by the thought of ticking off one of our goals. But why do we feel the need for a new start? Why is our species too ambitious to just be content with being good enough, and more absurdly, why do we feel like we have to wait for the beginning of a new year to start the beginning of a new, improved self?

When looking forward to our annual New Year's Eve celebrations, we don't just get excited thinking about all the automatically justified amounts of alcohol we'll be able to consume, and the documented, fun memories that usually come with it. There's something deeper and more personal linked to the last night of the year. The time before the only ten seconds that actually matter to us is devoted to reminiscing about the year that's passed, but most of all, hoping that everything will be different in the next one. By different, I don't mean the inevitable difference that every year brings with it, although similarities will occur; politicians will make mistakes we'll moan about for the rest of the year, celebrities will die, an additional threat that could potentially lead to cancer will be found and used to scare us, another trend we’ll embarrassingly look back on will go viral etc. The kind of difference that's attached to every new year consists of two main elements most of us can probably relate to: hope and forgiveness.

As we count down the seconds to the new year, we attempt to leave the last year behind, which means to hide the bad memories, wrong decisions and everything else that exposes us to the fact that we're not rational, perfect human beings, despite trying to achieve this constantly. We spend most of our time pretending to know what we're doing, hiding that we're all just idiots trying to get by through playing a character in the theatre play that’s our life. We learn our lines, try on our costumes, and rehearse choreographies, and if I'm honest, most of us do a pretty good job at staying in the role we've been given; at least until we get to take off our masks in front of a selected handful of people. However, in our eyes, everything that's gone wrong stays easily memorable and is what we most define ourselves by, and by starting a new year, it's almost as if we're trying to forgive ourselves for our failures and disappointments, in hopes that we'll do even just slightly better in the months ahead of us.

Despite being self-centred and partially self-absorbed enough to just care about ourselves when thinking about the year ahead, I believe it's not just our own improvement that we hope for when the clock ticks midnight to give us the feeling of a new chance. I've found that all events of injustice and tragedies that have caused our loved ones, and even strangers around the world, pain and suffering have had enough of an impact on us to remember it yet again when we're supposed to celebrate our reminiscence instead of mourning over what's happened. It could be a sign that we can still find solidarity and a potential for acts of empathy amongst us, showing that it's not just ourselves we offer a new chance, but everyone else around us, too. We hope that the next year will be a little more just, a little more loving, a little more supportive of those who need it and most of all, that we manage to improve together and change the world for the benefit of all people, and not just our biceps, selfies and own ego.

The notoriously hypocritical species that humans are, I am, of course, too, a victim of this illusion. I've spent days justifying what I wanted to do, instead of doing what I should've done, with the excuse that I'd do it in the new year. There's always going to be time for it in the new month ahead, I would tell myself while queueing up the next episode or staying in bed just another hour instead of getting up earlier to move forward instead of standing still. The last days of the year were, yet again, full of evaluations of the twelve months that have passed and the encouragement that I could start off with the perfect routine, work ethics and discipline as soon as the new year would give me the opportunity to start all over again. The only issue is that we're so obviously lying to ourselves, and while it does feel good to know that our conscience is forgiving us and we get multiple new chances to make up for everything, it's a lie that is paradoxically enough quite counterproductive. Instead of waiting for a new year or month to begin, wouldn't it be way more helpful and effective to see every day as a new start? Why wait when you get new attempts whenever you want them to be available to you? Why wait for a new year to be deserving of forgiveness and hope?Although creating new year's resolutions is the exact opposite of what I'm trying to promote here, there is one that I think is worth making: Daring to try and fail without apologies or regret, and always giving myself a new start after doing so - only so I can do it over and over again for several “next years” to come.

#anewyear #2018 #anewstart