On New Year's Resolutions

    Come New Year's Day, you and I probably know at least one person who has committed to do something this coming year. Whether it is to cut down on one particular thing, or to do some other thing, or to spend more here and less over there. We call these New Year's resolutions, simply because we resolved to do them for this year. When you spend time with people, the first thing that you learn from them is that they do not always know what they want. I found that people are often susceptible to their own moods, and are prone to changing them halfway through whatever it is that they decided to throw themselves into.

    Perhaps it is the side effect of humanity's nature; our natural desire to rebel against all forms of authority, even if it were ourselves that placed these restrictions upon ourselves in the form of such a resolution. Why do we bother trying, we should stop and ask ourselves this very question often. More often than not, we become so accustomed to going about our daily lives without bothering to try and understand the meaning behind most of what we do. We are merely content to go about it, or give up after trying a few times.

    The thing is, people don't seem to understand that we simply cannot change by ourselves and hope the world changes with us. No, things don't work that way. We can try enforcing change through sheer willpower or in the form of New Year's resolutions, but it does not bring about change from the heart. As with all things, the human heart drives more than just blood through our veins. It drives our desires, our energies, our emotions. And for as long as our hearts are set on things that the brain, which tries to use reasonability and logic as the guiding forces for the rest of the body, has already decided to be bad for us, we cannot effect change.

    We simply cannot look to ourselves to change, or hope it brings about lasting change. If we manage to change by willpower, when we inevitably die, all that change amounted to nothing. Something has to make us change. An external factor that tells the heart, "that which you desire is wrong." And only then can such a change begin to happen within ourselves because it will not simply be ourselves but would undoubtedly affect others as well. Our New Year's resolutions fail to change us because these aren't designed to change us. And that's why everyone breaks their New Year's resolutions, because they're designed to fail from the very beginning.