New Year’s Resolutions?

Shortly after Christmas the countdown begins towards the end of the year. People become nostalgic and reminisce about the year that has gone by. Whether you have fond memories or bad memories, this time of year always brings with it a measure of despondency and perhaps even frustration about failed resolutions and goals and plans that fell apart or ideas that did not exactly work out as planned. We all have our regrets of things we didn’t do or things we wish we had done differently.

With the new year, comes new hope. As New Year’s Eve approaches, a certain excitement builds. We start imagining the new things this new year could bring and we are excited about the possibility for positive change. Suddenly we are nostalgic about New Year’s past and what it means for new beginnings and we start making plans. We resolve to do it better – to start saving, to get fit, to lose that weight, to quit that job that makes us miserable and to find that dream job, to meet the perfect partner etc.

We all know the reasons why New Year’s resolutions fail. You’re on a high, you are a bit nostalgic, you’ve had too much to drink, you feel spurred on by the build up to the countdown towards this NEW year… but the next day you wake up, and nothing has changed and you face the reality of having to actually DO something for your life to change. The day after the New Year’s celebration becomes just another day on the calendar.

Leaving your home for new beginnings elsewhere during this time of year does something to your level of nostalgia and excitement about the New Year. Technically, you have already enacted your resolutions, since you have left your home country and moved to a different country on the other side of the world. The other problem of course, is you watch the rest of the world and everyone you know, enter the New Year and leave you behind in the past – literally, since a 10-hour time difference means everyone back home celebrates the New Year and gets into bed all while you haven’t even started your countdown. A bit anti-climatic. What is the point of counting down when you are the only ones left to do it? Everyone else has already crossed over to the other side. They are living in 2018 and you are still stuck in 2017.

Then you think about the irony of that, because in so many ways you are still stuck in the past. You keep thinking about what everyone else is doing back home and about how you might have celebrated had you still been back home in your own country. You think about past New Year’s celebrations and the people you shared it with. You remember your house, and the familiar stores you would visit, familiar routes you would drive, familiar places you would holiday at and suddenly you don’t feel like new beginnings. You wish you could travel back in the past and spend a few moments in one of your memories of celebrations past.

You wish you could be there for one more family braai, one more song on the radio, one more movie in your favourite cinema, one more coffee with a friend, one more hug from a loved one… You realise how important it is to build memories that carry you through the hard times in your life. We all like to hope that the coming year will be better than the one just past. But perhaps the coming year was filled with so many last times, so many special moments that might never come again. So stop living in the past. Stop living in the future. Just live for now. Take in THIS moment and savour it. Remember what it sounded, tasted and felt like, because in the end, our lives are made up of these small moments that made us pause, that made us laugh, that insisted we be present and alive and in awe of this thing we call life.