Aaaaah! January you lovely, lovely soul. The month of resolutions, of goal setting, new years and new me’s and I have a torrid little confession. Im tired of resolutions!!! There I said it! That’s my hot take, my polarizing opinion, my societal divider opinion. I mean come one, how long have we been doing this for? Does it work? Probably not if we are going to be quite honest with ourselves. I am a firm believer in the fact that change cannot be forced, it cannot be timed, it cannot even be inspired that much out of any individual. I’m reminded of the quote,” consider how hard it is to change yourself, and maybe you might understand how much monumental of a task it is to actually change others” Okay I’m not quite sure that’s EXACTLY how that quote goes but you get the gist.
People change when then want to, not because the sun has made another orbit around the sun, not because of a Gregorian Calendar or the Julian Almanac. Fun fact we didn’t even always use the Gregorian Calendar until the fifteen hundreds. So really like all things we improvised as we went along. Now, I am NOT discounting the power of a game plan and 90-day tactics, vision boards, planners and swanky calendar notes. Far from it, I’m sure there is a significant percentage of individuals who HAVE facilitated meaningful adjustments within their lives based off of a focused departure from one set of habits to new ones at the beginning of the year. I’m just saying, for the majority of us, who have NOT changed because it’s the first of January, who have probably relapsed on the 5th and vowed to try again, maybe its time we stopped that cycle. Perhaps the time has come to allow change to permeate more naturally, because you want to make a concerted effort to become a better person, because you genuinely want to learn a new skill and advance forward, because let’s face it, time dictated change hardly lasts. Its like that fad diet where you lose 9 kilograms then gain then all back again in a month PLUS more.
So, when does change come you might ask? If not from time facilitated movements around us? The human mind and human habits are fascinating things. Take for example Tom and Anesu. Tom and Anesu grew up in a household where their father viciously beat up their mother. Toxic, painful childhoods, characterised by blood splattered walls, frequent police visits and incessant yelling. Tom and Anesu, grew up to become men in their own individual households. Anesu is the antithesis of his father, he swore he would never subject his children to the same tormented existence. He has never laid a hand on his wife and strives to live his life without violence. He is a product of his upbringing. Tom is the replica of his father in almost every way. He resorts to aggression at the slightest of provocations, he is morose and moody almost all the time, his children have never known a loving hand. He is also a product of his upbringing and therein lies the problem. To tie change to external factors is problematic in that our response to external factors and stimuli varies greatly.
It is perhaps tied to the fact that the new year new me wave is premised AND commercialized heavily on the presumption that there is something wrong with your life. All of a sudden, even though you were chugging along at a nice pace, you are inundated with ads and reminders and suggestions that you NEED to do something new. Now I’m all for shaking things up, HUGE fan of spontaneity and the deepest hater of rigmarole. Its perhaps why I like my current job, no one day is the same, you work on aquaculture today and collective investment schemes the next, but that is never tied to time which almost always sets you up for failure because lets just face it, maybe you are just not ready to change. And that too is okay.
What is the end game then? The end game, the point, really the ultimate goal is to not become individuals who buckle under societal pressure and timelines. Its to allow a new dawn and end the era of suffocating pressure, clinging on to you and putting a very loud ticking clock right next to your ear which frankly just makes it worse. Its about healing and heralding self discovery on your own terms. Change will come when it is meant to, real lasting change that fits your life and your headspace, and the moment will be perfect, because you arrived exactly when you were meant to. Happy 2022.
Comments