Resolution

Resolutions eh?

Most people make them. Even if you don't, you are aware that you are NOT making them.

Magazines exhort us to change our lives, Boots wants us to Change One Thing.

Why do we do it? Why do we resolve to change our ways? Especially when we know the vast majority of us will fail to stick to these self imposed mandates.

Apparently the Romans started it all, with their two faced mythical king Janus, who got his own month, despite not being real. He looked back to the past and forward to the future and became the symbol for resolutions.

Is it some cultural memory of the pagan festivals of rebirth that demarked the beginning of spring? 

Nah.

I think it's something to do with the feeling that we are in control. Things that you can change, you control. If you can control the things in your life, you are choosing how you live.

Even if you ended up failing in your resolutions, you still could have changed.

So, maybe we make resolutions to validate all the things in our life that we don't resolve to change, all those things we choose to keep doing.

Or maybe we got drunk all December and feel rotten.