“Yeah, I think I’m going to skip the gym today. It’s been so packed lately because of that whole “new year, new you” thing. Emily couldn’t even get into White Building. There was a line out the door.”
“Give it a week. It’ll die down. No one actually sticks to their resolutions.”
Location Overheard: 106 Chambers Building
“New year, new you.” Each year, as we near the end of the month of December and emerge on the first day of January, this particular slogan can be seen plastered across Instagram captions of Jessica posing with a margarita in Mexico or your grandma who’s just sifted through her friends list on Facebook, cutting out “fake friends.”
Either way, “new year, new me” has become a mantra for people worldwide who desire to be transformed into the individuals that, deep down, haven’t had the guts to emerge in any other given month. So, naturally, the beginning of a new calendar year (even though time never really has a defined beginning nor end, it kind of continues without anyone’s approval) seems like the perfect time to finally become the person you have envisioned for the past year but never really had the time to pursue.
As we religiously praise “new, year, new me” as a way to reconstruct ourselves, dismissing everything we displease with the hopeful promise of changed habits, then why is it notorious that this mindset begins to fade by the second week of January? For some, maybe even by the second day?
Approximately 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by February. In the year 2019, it has become a known fact that resolutions rather transform into wishful thoughts. Resolutions are more like the half-completed projects that you so eagerly pursued at first, yet, now they remain half done, collecting dust as the months progress and the desire to “try again” is a far removed thought from your mind.
Amidst the failed fates of resolutions, this year I began to think of the holiday in a different way. What I was able to infer was that people certainly enjoy posting their resolutions on social media as a way to reaffirm the new journey they’re about to endure, as if permanently publicizing the promise that they are making with themselves is the equivalent of signing a contract.
Even though the first day of January is overloaded with updated statuses of your Aunt Marge who you know won’t stop drinking excessive amounts of wine even though she proposes to do so. And even though there’s actually a 20% chance that David, the high school drug dealer, will actually quit his Juul addiction, I’ve decided this year that its become a beautiful thing to watch people seek to uncover the individuals they want to emerge from the ashes of 2018 and rise into the new light of 2019. I believe this holiday is about promoting self-growth and taking steps into the unknown, even though many people’s hangovers on New Year’s Day last longer than the actual resolution itself.
I think New Year has certainly surpassed many holidays on my list of favorites. New beginnings, however big or small, spark a small flame in people. For some it lasts the whole year, their flames rising greater with each month that they fulfill their goals. For others, it slowly dims before becoming extinguished before the calendar displays January 31st. Either way, time and the illusion that it is offers a small “start over” or “reset” for those who choose to step out of the comfortable complacency that the last year had molded their minds and bodies to. I’m not sure how a flip of a calendar page can inspire such change, but for at least the start of a New Year, humans across the world envision a better version of themselves and aiming to do just that is something that should be celebrated.
So, I guess the moral of this conversation is that “new me” doesn’t have to wait for “new year.” I suppose we’ll never know if Emily braved the line at the gym or gave up and went home. Either way, remember, you don’t need a New Year for you to become everything you’ve always wanted to be, or to start eating more plants, or to go to the gym more often, or to uproot and move to San Francisco.
Each and every day is a perfectly fine day to do so.
P.S. checkout “About” under the “Menu” tab on Overheard State College’s home page to find out what sparked the creation of this passion blog and more worldwide Overheard pages!
I really enjoyed reading this blog as the more I think about it, the New Year is just a social construct yet, somehow such an arbitrary point in time can have a really motivating effect on people and their behavior! I know that when I flip my calendar over I feel motivated to start from scratch and it is almost as though whatever mistakes I made in the previous year don’t matter anymore. However, I can definitely sympathize with getting annoyed when places that you are accustomed to being a certain way get extremely crowded because of people trying out their new habits (like what happened to your friend in the white building). After the New Year, I saw a vast amount of posts on Instagram about how it is always a good time to challenge yourself and that you don’t just have to wait until the New Year, so I completely agree with you when you say that you don’t need a New Year to be everything you have always wanted to be!
Grace, I love that you are commenting on what you randomly overhear on campus and around State College! Sometimes I wish that I could jump into random conversations I overhear, but I assume they would think I was crazy! I loved your commentary and I have already failed one of my resolutions (the one to stop ripping my fingernails), but I am trying to recover that resolution. Great post!