As we embark on another trip around the Sun it is the time honoured tradition to make a list of resolutions for the year ahead; a to-do list of sorts with the out with the old, in with the new promise of a freshly cleaned slate. However, much of what we set out in the prospectus for the new year is often abandoned as a matter of convenience within relatively short time as we inevitably slip back into the mode of comfort that took us on our last spin around our parent star.
Actions as the expression goes, do speak louder than words and that last pack of cigarettes seldom runs out with the turn of the year just as the fridge doesn’t empty itself of its less healthy contents when the clock strikes 12. The fatal words ‘I’ll just’ followed by a sneaky clause of self deception, lead to a stay of execution for the vice in question. Such words are so often the tipping point and see the best intentions fail to get off the ground much less endure.
So, still harbouring some desire to upgrade our lives from the year gone by we sometimes scour the web for books to guide or teach us the error of our ways both individually and as a species. Since the turn of the millennium there have been a decent number of books riffing on the number 20 as lessons learnt or to be learnt from the 20th Century. While many probably have something of merit to say, they ignore philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s quote that ‘we learn from history that we do not learn from history’.
As such and despite the earnest attempts of the various authors, the wisdom of such tomes is forever locked away between the covers and produces only the slender benefits of Cosmopolitan back issues citing 10 ways to please your man. We and most of the world will go on finding new ways of doing the same things well, badly or indifferently and divorce and break up rates will remain unaffected by Cosmo’s best efforts.
Other lists expanded on in book form have been more forward looking with the likes of ‘21 Lessons for the 21st Century’ by Yuval Noah Harari whose previous work ‘Sapiens’ suggests an interesting read. I’d wager the 20th Century could provide more than 20 lessons for humanity to not learn then repeat ad infinitum and the 21st surely has more under its belt already.
Never to miss a trick on his relatively recent rise to public prominence, Jordan Peterson managed to crack out a hefty book providing ‘12 rules for life’ last year. I have absolutely no plan to read it whatsoever and would find it difficult to take lessons from a man who claims to exist on a beef only diet. Perhaps he got the number back to front but if so, it’s as well he did. If his very long road to a very small house style is any measure, a book of 21 rules would be excruciatingly biblical in length and as baffling as a soup sandwich. Parsed down into anything meaningful it would unlikely consist of more than a flysheet.
My own view of New Year’s resolutions and lists is to take them with a pinch of salt and accept free will is probably an illusion anyway.
Christopher Hitchen’s paradox; ‘of course you have free will, you have no choice’ is helpfully unhelpful. Make a list if you wish but seriously, just how much can you realistically change? If you are going to make a bucket list then you are most likely the type who would make a bucket list and if we’re going to make changes, we are already the type who would. If any amount of will is of our own making then I would go for thinking for yourself with the proviso that you may be wrong and correcting course isn’t a sign of weakness.
To paraphrase Scottish comic Frankie Boyle, nothing will matter eventually with the heat death of the Universe. So with that in mind do your best in as much as you are free to, meditate to exist sanely in the here and now, avoid lists and the ensuing disappointment they can bring and don’t worry what others think of you because they seldom actually do.
Happy 2019
For 2019 I will avoid loud noises and read more Dave.
It’s sweet you still think you have a choice.