Humor

You will need big fires in your life to get you through what everyone agrees is the most blues-ridden piece of the year January. We’ve long established a tradition of making New Year’s Resolutions to somehow warm and energize us with well intentioned motivational energy. Perhaps it is designed to distract us from suffering out a month as cold as a 7–Eleven slushy, when it gets dark at three and the first holiday is light years away. A perverse Western tradition.

Or is it? I thought so until my research revealed the practice of making New Year’s resolutions has been around for thousands of years. The ancient Babylonians invented the tradition about 2000 B.C. Their most common resolution was to return borrowed farm equipment. Back then the Babylonians made the strong moral point that what you did on the first day of the year would have a profound effect on the entire year. They then insidiously slipped the concept like an extra Joker into card deck of Western thinking. That wily old dictator Saddam and ancestors have been lashing us with it ever since. Imagine creating a weapon so subtly diabolical it demoralizes your enemy for four thousand years. That’s thinking outside the box. It’s precisely the kind of hidden weapon of mass destruction George Bush should have been looking for during the recent Iraq War.

But even if he’d found it, Bush would have been too late. New Year’s resolutions have wormed themselves far too deeply into the bone of Western culture to eradicate them in a mere generation or two. After 4,000 years they have morphed from returning borrowed farm equipment and boiled themselves down to the gravy of the top four:

Statistics say that by the beginning of March, 63% of all resolution-makers are still keeping their resolutions. I don’t believe this. Three months is about the time it takes to make a permanent lifestyle change. If the 63% figure were true, compounded annually, all cigarette companies would be out of business. Beer, wine and hard liquor would have vanished long ago from the cultural landscape. McDonald’s would have been replaced by Sensible Salad drive-throughs. Turkey farms would be raising free-range birds composed totally of soy and Gold’s gym would be bigger than General Motors. Every employee of every company would be happily working 24 hours a day. Doesn’t add up. It tells me there must be a hell of a drop off after March 1.

Statistics also say that 67% of resolutionists make three or more resolutions. This I find more credible. Three are harder to keep than one, so this should mitigate the success rate. In addition more people resolve to take up a new habit rather than drop an old one. This rings true. It is more fun taking on a new habit than kicking an old one. One look at the quasi-anorexics in a high-end aerobics class will tell you even fitness is addictive.

Still there is the question of trying to rid ourselves of this tiresome four-thousand year old Babylonian ritual once and for all. Or at least try to beat them at their own game.

I asked friends to tell me the dumbest resolution they had ever made. A banker told me his. Quit drinking in January. He fell right into the trap. He might as well have sworn off oxygen. Unless he stops by the local pub every two or three days after work he becomes under-socialized and unhappy, and bankers are sour enough already without adding to their own gloom. So if he wins he loses, and if he loses he loses. A depressing lack of winners.

Exactly what the Babylonians intended. Some years ago I became personally entrapped. One New Year’s Eve I was goaded into resolving that I would quit drinking beer for three months to facilitate weight loss. Finally pride got the better of me and I agreed. Then I foolishly compounded the error by betting fifty dollars on myself with a friend. Double jeporady. When you make a simple no-win resolution you can invisibly back out of it over a decent period of time. But bet on yourself and you will be watched like a hawk. Thus when I met friends after racquetball or the gym I was forced to order expensive highballs while they downed gallons of cheap beer. During the next three months the expenses of my winning amortized at a far quicker rate than the fifty-dollar mortgage on my loss. Thus I won. Yet in winning, I lost. Over the course of three months had spent approximatly three hundred dollars on vodka screwdrivers to become a fifty-dollar beer abstainer.

Nevertheless you can approach the New Year’s resolution crab-like, from a slight angle. This would be the kind of resolution which is essentially winner-less and loser-less. It would be a list like this:

1. Will floss more. All my life I’ve been a closer flossing outlaw. I floss a tiny bit now but not enough to make a difference in my dental health. If I floss more I’ll have won. If I floss less my teeth won’t leap out of my head. In the end I’ll probably floss about the same. See? No winner or loser. The victimless resolution. The same can be said for the next four.

2. Will eat more Velveeta. I will try my best, especially melted with crispy dark edges on the Velveeta on open-faced sandwiches.

3. Will not eat crème brulee. I cannot afford to go to places which serve crème brulee in the first place and will strive to stay in this demographic category.

4. Will drink club soda, not Perrier. I feel sorry for people who drink bottled water of any kind, especially in the Pacific Northwest, which has more fresh clear water than anywhere else on earth. It’s like paying to breathe. I prefer ginger ale as a beverage for its restorative qualities but should I get the urge to drink bottled water I will go straight to the club soda shelf.

5. Will brush my Hush Puppies every night. Any Hush Puppy brushing I do in the New Year will be an increase over my current rate. These resolutions are easily achievable yet you suffer no short or long term ill effects should you fail. You can see the strategy. You can make up your own harmless list and sail through to the beginning of March looking like a champ without doing much of anything. But is not losing the same as winning? Nope. For that you need another strategy.

I have a friend who confounds resolution psychology by approaching it > from exactly the opposite direction. Every year he makes the following four resolutions.

If he doesn’t accomplish any of these he loses, but he also wins. In the strictest sense, his winning would amount to failure, but he’d have more fun so he still wins. It’s win-win. This is the closest I’ve seen to beating the resolution riddle. Abraham Lincoln once said, “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing.” This is the part that worries me. When towering historical figures become resolution-minded and make encouraging public statements, it setsoff a chain reaction. It influences whole communities to think likewise. And in the dark chill of January the resolutions harden up with the frost. They freeze into public spirited but wrong-headed laws.

It has already happened. For example, in Tennessee they resolved to prohibit people with a gambling addiction to flip a coin in a restaurant, even to pay for a coffee. This, I am sad to say, is unenforceable and thus win-less. In Gary, Indiana you cannot go to a movie house or ride public transit within four hours of eating garlic. Well-intentioned resolution, but harder to enforce. Still no winners. In Chicago it is illegal to eat in a burning building. I can see this. After all, who wants to deal with a dinner guest whose tuxedo is on fire? No one benefits. Sensible and fairly achievable, yet you never know when a pyromaniac might want to grab a quick snack after work. The only one that really gets it right is the public, on the-books resolution that it is illegal to go whale fishing in Nebraska. Other than the Missouri River, the largest body of water in Nebraska is the Harlan County Reservoir in the south central part of the state, roughly two miles from Republican City. It is swimming with walleye, white bass, catfish, striped bass, largemouth bass, crappie and northern pike, but devoid of whales. Nebraska wins and the whales win. Pure genius.

In the end the best New Year’s resolution you can make is to help science. Volunteer to be part of a clinical study as to why we keep making resolutions in the first place. And if you decide to do this, please, don’t start the resolution without me.

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Addictive Behaviors Research Center, University of Washington, Box 351525, Seattle WA 98195 | Phone (206) 685-1395 | resolve@u.washington.edu