What I Learned From Old Resolutions About Why Ours Are Slippery
|
Old resolutions weren’t about becoming someone new. They were about working through what already was. That difference matters. Welcome to What I Learned From… “Among Violet's many useful skills was a vast knowledge of different types of knots. The particular knot she was using was called the Devil's Tongue. A group of female Finnish pirates invented it back in the fifteenth century, and named it the Devil's Tongue because it twisted this way and that, in the most complicated and eerie way.” ― Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning What I Learned From …New Year’s resolutions have always been about self-improvement. What is new is how quickly we jump to the end now. We decide the answer before we have done any of the work! The problem is not that people are “wrong.” The word “resolution” didn’t start out as some number, or target, or perfectly clean declaration of who you will be by December 31st. The word originally asked for something slower and more physical than that. “Resolution” comes from the Latin resolvere, which is built around solvere (meaning to loosen or undo something that has been bound together.) The re- at the front isn’t really about repetition so much as intensity; it’s the sense that you don’t just loosen a little and call it done, you keep working at it until the thing actually breaks apart. A resolution wasn’t about stating an answer, it was about the sometimes frustrating process of pulling at it until you could tell what was connected to what, and where the tension was actually coming from. That meaning stuck around way past its Latin use, and made its way into Middle English. You see it in mathematics, where resolving a problem meant breaking it down into parts you could actually work with, and in government, where a resolution is introduced to be discussed and debated before it becomes law. These days, resolve and resolution do carry a sense of finality. But that only makes sense because they imply the uncertainty had already been worked through. This kind of thing happens throughout all of time. Language changes, new meanings pile up, they sorta twist up on each other and lose their edge...and that’s normal. Way back when, the Babylonians are usually credited as the first culture to formalize something like a New Year resolution, as a means of clearing the clutter and debts and harm from the past year so they could start the new year with clarity. The Romans carried a similar idea forward, but gave it a face: Janus, the god the month of January is named for. He's usually described as looking backward and forward. But what’s more interesting is that he does both at the same time, with two faces on his head; one normal throat-sided face and the other a mirror on the back. Since he was the doorkeeper of the gods, he had to constantly know who was coming AND going at any one time. When you look at examples from the early 1900s, you still see resolutions that feel closer to that Janus-like orientation than to anything resembling a checklist or a target. In 1900, one woman wrote into Georgia’s Columbus Daily Enquirer to say she “had resolved to stay at home more, and to go out more.” Not exactly a SMART goal, it’s more like an admission that life pulls us in opposite directions, and that resolving it isn’t about choosing one and erasing the other. Even in 1947, when Gallup asked Americans about their New Year’s resolutions, the most common answers weren’t about numbers or outcomes. People talked about improving their character, living a better life, and being more efficient. Quitting smoking and losing weight were actually at the bottom of the list. These were things you worked on, not things you finished or completed. The resolution isn’t the result. It’s the commitment to stay inside the work of resolving, even when it’s contradictory, even when it’s slow, even when it doesn’t collapse neatly into a single version of yourself that you can point to and say: "There. That’s it!" Somewhere along the way, we stopped resolving and started declaring. When we name the outcome (“I’m gonna lose 30 pounds!”, “I’m gonna write a novel this year!!”, “I’m gonna make a half-a-million dollars!!!”) we skip the slower, messier work. And then we’re somehow surprised when the resolution doesn’t hold come February 17th. Because resolution was never meant to be a finish line. It was a way of working through uncertainty and murk, instead of pretending it wasn’t there. Writing doesn’t get better because you declare a book finished, or set a word count, or decide what kind of writer you’re going to be this year. It gets better because you keep resolving the work in front of you. Pull it apart. Sit with the contradictions. Get all up in the mucky work of digging through what you’ve got until you get the knots untangled. It’s gross and you’ll hate it while you’re doing it…but you and I both know that your writing will end up better because of it. We’re not making resolutions to become some new version of ourselves. Instead, we’ve gotta be willing to break things apart, so we can see all the parts, and then put them back together to create a result that we never could have resolved at a simple glance. Notes from the Masters …Craft advice that holds up, straight from the ones who lived it. “Knots were probably the earliest spells.” — T.H. White Prompted: Your Move …A spark from this week’s essay. Use it to write your own. Steal that 1900s example and write about a desire that completely contradicts itself. Wanting to stay home more and go out more? Wanting to finish and linger? Wanting change and stability at the same time? Let it stay unresolved…that’s the point. Try This Thing …No promises. Just a potentially brilliant shortcut or two. When I say I use Buffer to help me stay on top of the only two social media platforms I really stay on top of (Threads & LinkedIn) I’m not just saying that. On their free plan you can schedule up to 10 posts on 3 different platforms…if putting yourself out there more in 2026 is one of your resolutions, this is a good way to dig into the different spaces and put them back together. The Final Chuckle …Serious writing deserves unserious endings. If only we didn’t have to look like corpses as we slog through the resolving! ‘Til next time ~ Elisa PS - Keeping it pretty light this week, as we all shake off the holiday sugar plum cobwebs. We’ll be back to full WILF WILFery next week! |