The thing about new year resolutions is that, even in the face of pandemics and wars, even amidst the great roar of climate change and totalitarian intolerance and all those drones hovering over our heads, they creep up silently, on their eerie little feet, and sooner than later you find yourself at midnight, sitting in your pyjamas, making lists of vices to give up and virtues to adopt, while stuffing your face with a hundred cookies. After all, on January 1, you are giving up sugar. (You can replace above with any poison of choice -- pounding out tweets or ordering K-beauty products in bulk or simultaneously binge-watching two shows on different screens just so you are DONE.)
As for me, I’ve been resolving to turn over a new leaf for the last three decades at least. My earliest memory is of packing my schoolbag with exaggerated care in the New Year, wrapping my books and copies in SEPARATE PLASTIC PACKETS before placing them in the damn bag, who knows why, because it’s not like I would have had to brave a blizzard on the way to school in downtown Calcutta.
Despite all the practice though, I don't think I understood the psychology of it very well. Turns out, three behavioural scientists have studied the phenomenon, using a mix of psychology and field studies.
According to Hengchen Dai, Katy Milkman and Jason Riis, new year resolutions are so popular because human beings, programmed by nature to clock the passage of time in their narratives of selfhood, find they are able to better marshal willpower and effect positive changes, when faced with a temporal shift. It appears that January 1 is the most popular of these seasonal temporal shifts. The "fresh start effect" it provides helps people take a step back from the constant chatter of life and assess the big-picture. This motivates what Dai, Milkman and Riis call "aspirational behaviour".
Enter: Twist in the Plot. SARS-Cov-2, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Omicron. I don't know about you guys but I have decided that this New Year I will refuse the seductions of "aspirational behaviour" altogether, and refuse to accept all the beautiful diaries that people gift me -- gainfully employed people whose companies bring out these helpful, re-giftable items that they then throw around like confetti -- since my house is still littered with the corpses of the last two years' haul. In each one of these, the first pages have my dreams of a better self, written out in my best handwriting, following which are a couple of recipes and lists, after which the remaining pages, from February to December, cry out blankly. I mean what should I even write this year as my goal: aspire to survive new variant?
Marie Kondo may have built her career on spark joy -- but while choosing which items to throw away, I will have you know, it is the spark horror items that I would like to dispense with first. And while it might be prudent to keep that Budecort inhaler and those vile files of antibiotics in the bathroom cupboard yet, the diaries, I think, can safely go.That’s my new year resolution.
Having said that, I am now confronted by a somewhat tangential doubt. After their successful attack
on the convivial Christmas spirit in the country last week, will our right-wing vigilantes, currently looking for their new spark horror project, turn to the New Year?
I mean even in my JNU days, I'd heard esteemed members of the comparatively milder, Vajpayee-era RW refuse to wish people happy new year, since Vikram Samvat was their preferred calendar -- not that I have anything against the Samvat. (And I will have you know that in the past, I have tried to clean up my finances by purchasing a bahikhata on the Samvat New Year.)
In Bengal, traditionally Poila Boishakh is celebrated as the New Year. But since it fell bang in the middle of summer, I think people had far less energy for new resolutions. The mellow January in Calcutta, all blue skies and soft shawls, was far more suitable for optimism.
And so, in sum, I think I’d better hold off on implementing my New Years' resolution too soon. If they come to burn the diaries and the planners, then I will of course rescind my position entirely, and get to the business of resistively turning over a new leaf.
ALSO SEE:
Resistive aspirational behaviour: can that be a viable liberal position? Will Dai, Milkman and Riis give the matter some thought?
Meanwhile: happy new year, dear readers. May the force be with you!
(I suppose by next year, I’ll need a sanskari alternative.)
Devapriya Roy is an author and teacher; her latest book is Friends from College. She can be reached at roydevapriya@gmail.com.