New Year's Resolutions

Even if you're going to break them in a few weeks, it's time to think about New Year's resolutions. Do you aim high — to make the world a better place, save the environment — or more basic — lose weight, get out of debt, stop smoking? President George W. Bush resolved to eat fewer cheeseburgers. Douglas Raybeck, who is a psychological anthropologist, is resolute about not making any New Year's resolutions, but he did have some thoughts about why we do it. 

"The New Year is a marker or beginning," Raybeck said. "We assign midnight with special meaning with new possibilities on the other side. New Year's eve is the threshold of the new year with all the potential and all the threats of the future. It is the perfect time to make promises to ourselves, and perhaps God, to become something other than what we are."

New Year's is also a sociologically and psychologically auspicious occasion to see transformation, Raybeck said. A good example is Patricia Ingalls, director of campus safety, who used the New Year to start her 2002 exercise program. (She said she welcomes encouragement, so feel free to harass her if she's driving and not walking on campus.)

"Resolutions are an expression of our faith in our own perfectibility — however displaced," Raybeck added. American's fundamental social and cultural value on individualism lead them to make New Year's resolutions.

Barbara Gold, professor of classics, resolves to think more (teaching, scholarship) and go to fewer meetings! Esena Doyle, communications assistant, resolves to be more organized in 2002. Marylyn Nassimos, technology support, said she plans to  "spend more time with Dr. Divot," (improving her golf swing.)

New Year's resolutions about denial — eat less, spend less, stop _____(fill in the blank) illustrate the dynamic conflict between the capitalist social context of our daily lives and what we think it means to be a good human being.

 Kristin L. Strohmeyer, reference librarian and coordinator of instructional services, resolves to lose weight, "as usual, and to learn how to say 'no' but remain active in my community and church."

In the wake of September 11 attacks, New Year's resolutions are likely to be less self-serving and more altruistic. "Things are not going to be the same again," Raybeck said. "We don't want to watch the news because it's too painful. And we're going to be less secure but, perhaps, better intentioned."

 Gold's other, broader resolve for 2002 fits this pattern. She plans "to work toward a peaceful resolution of conflict both close to home and in the larger world around us."

 "Humans like to believe that they can control, or at the least affect, their circumstances. Indeed, psychologists have found perceived control to be one of the strongest of our cognitive needs," Raybeck said. "The attacks of September 11 have disturbed our complacency and made us aware of the tenuousness of our personal and social 'control.' As a result, among other cultural changes, we'll see an increasing ability to take the trivial very seriously, in no small part because the trivial is understandable and not a threat. Clarity and simplicity allow us to think that life is back into its neat little pigeon holes — which is of course misleading — but nonetheless pleasant."