Siobhan Adcock

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Dec 27, 2019 · 5 min read

You know what would be great? If I weighed 30 pounds less, worked more efficiently, fought for justice, parented with patience, spent less money, and never experienced sadness, anger, frustration, or temptation.

Hey, I know what I’ll do! I’ll just resolve to make that happen! First, I’ll decide that I’m going to change, um, everything about myself, and second, I’ll decide on an arbitrary day to begin — oh, hell, call it January 1.

To start, in order to lose 30 pounds, I’ll get a wearable health device and join a gym. Unfortunately, this means I’ll need to break my resolution to spend less money. To compensate, I’ll work harder to make more money. But this means I’ll have less time to devote to causes that are meaningful to me. So much for that resolution—but to be honest, I kinda just threw that one in there anyway. To make up for it, I’ll double down on family. We’ll have board game nights and family dinners and meaningful experiences and throw our phones into the river.

See how really, really great this is all going?

Okay, look, I’m not saying it’s pointless to try to improve yourself or your life. What I’m saying is you are not actually broken. Your money, your parenting, your weight, your emotions, your vices — these are not defective things that need to be fixed or optimized or tamed into submission. They are part of being a person.

And right there, friends, is why New Year’s resolutions suck: They do not benefit you so much as they reinforce the idea that you are not enough. But they do benefit larger forces that you did not create and have no control over — the same forces that convinced you that you were broken in the first place.

In other words, New Year’s resolutions are a fucking trap, and I’m calling them out.

A brief history of why New Year’s resolutions suck

From their Bronze Age beginnings, New Year’s resolutions were about the gross domestic product. The first New Year resolutions were made by ancient Babylonians at the beginning of their planting season, when people promised their gods and each other to work hard and pay off their debts. It was all about bolstering the economy — a better growing season, less money owed, more capital.

That’s right: From their very inception, New Year’s resolutions have been about exploiting the myth of self-improvement to force individuals to shoulder the economic and social burdens of their societies. Individuals were supposed to work harder, pay more, and generally feel responsible for huge shit they had no way of controlling, like the weather, the economy, and the geopolitics of ancient Eurasia.

An uncanny resemblance

You know how, while our governments refuse to enforce regulations that would cap carbon emissions, reduce nonreusable materials, and punish environmentally unsound business and development practices, we tell ourselves that it’s all on us individuals to recycle and take the bus and not use our air conditioners?

Or how the cost of corporate tax cuts over the past three decades have been passed on to workers in the form of higher taxes and stagnant wages — but if you’re in debt or can’t pay off your college loans or afford a home, it’s somehow your fault for not working hard enough?

Or, okay, here’s one: You know how trying to be a better parent in America means paying attention to your kids all the time every second, except that (a) you have to work to support your kids; (b) literally everything, from the 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. school day to childcare deserts to the cost of health care, sets up American parents to fail; and (c) even if you did somehow manage to succeed in paying attention to your kids all the time every second, you’d be accused of overparenting?

Listen. I’m not saying don’t recycle or don’t pay taxes or don’t try to be a decent parent. What I’m saying is, New Year’s resolutions rely on the same subtext: “If things are wrong with you, it’s all your fault. The system is not broken. You are.” But that’s a lie.

Why resolutions are a capitalist trap

If you weigh more than you want to, it’s probably not because you can’t stop eating. It’s probably because healthy food is less affordable and less convenient than unhealthy food.

If you owe more money than you want to, it’s probably not because you don’t work hard. More likely, it’s because you want to be happier, and you are the recipient of relentless messaging that tells you that spending money on things will make you happy.

If you smoke or drink more than you want to, it’s probably not because you’re unaware that those habits are dangerous to your health. I bet it has something to do with the way companies are actually funding round-the-clock campaigns to convince you that while other people may die of lung cancer or heart disease or slowly poisoning yourself, you won’t.

These are just examples. They’re a way of pointing out that you are not actually the problem.

You’re not perfect the way you are. Nobody is. But you are part of something bigger than yourself. We all are. And that bigger thing? It doesn’t care about your well-being. It cares about how much money you can make and spend.

Hasn’t it ever struck you as fishy that the most popular resolutions people make are ones that result in becoming a better, fitter, more productive worker bee? Thanks, Babylonia. Your happiness, your well-being, your best-selfness, they are all immaterial unless they somehow contribute to the best planting season Babylonia has ever seen.

So in the spirit of embracing self-improvement efforts that actually, you know, improve something, here are some good resolutions for 2020 that aren’t traps: Read more. Think more. Enjoy your life more. Take care of yourself and others.

Because you probably already know this, but the road to a better, happier life is paved with promises you can actually keep.