Sometimes an idea has a moment, and one which I have heard floating around a lot recently is the concept of an autumn reset (there's probably a piece to be written on how, in this information saturated and algorithmic age, it's unsurprising that you hear a few people talking about the same thing at the same time, but this isn't it) or fresh start to the year. I was reading an article (which I won't link to, as frankly it was too stupid an idea to deserve the clicks) which was pushing the idea of autumn as being the ideal time for this, a new you, a reset after the excesses of summer. The reason ran thus: it's the start of the academic year, freesh starts for kids and young adults, why not for the older ones, too? To which I can only reply: New year's resolutions are a bad enough idea in January, why on Earth would you want to do them again?
To which, of course, the only reasonable response is that nobody ever got poor by copying. The attempts to rebrand Easter as Christmas redux (Easter presents?), the bewildering proliferation of days devoted to particular relatives. The various months devoted to sobriety for those for whom Lent just isn't enough, why not New Year's Two, This Time It's An Acknowledgement Of Failure? Because if you'd stuck to those resolutions in the first place, if you really were living your instagrammable best life, then you wouldn't need it. But before we descend too far into grumpy old man territory, I should make it clear that I've got a reason or two why I think this is perhaps not the best way to structure one's life.
The idea of the fresh start is one of the most beguiling lies that we humans tell ourselves. A clean slate, all previous failures washed away, out of sight, out of mind. It's easy to see why it's a tempting idea, but I'd contend that it contains within it the seeds of its own destruction; it is a way of looking at things which is less helpful than simply plodding on. It's doomed to failure, and you will only feel worse.
The reason I take this Eeyore-like view of the concept of dramatic, instantaneous self-improvement is two-fold: firstly, I mistrust easy answers, it generally means someone's trying to sell you something, but secondly, and most pertinently, what this ground zero approach to sorting out whatever needs sorting out does is fail to acknowledge what came before. If I were an alcoholic, I don't cease to be an alcoholic simply because I've stopped drinking (and actual alcoholics of my acquaintance concur with this), for an addict, the day they stop is part of an overall process, not a clean slate, they always have to keep in mind who they were before, because that is who they are still.
This is the great myth of the self-improvement industry, the idea that one can become a different person overnight. Well, you can't, because if you did, you would cease to be you. It's a Stalinesque purge of your personal history which, much like Stalin himself, will fail to conceal what it wishes to do, because people just aren't built like that. It's lovely to tell yourself that one day you'll go for a run, and from that day hence you'll be a runner, five days a week, without fail, it's quite another thing to lace your trainers up at five in the morning on a dank February Tuesday. And the reason that this particular bit of confidence trickery is so destructive to one's mental well-being is that it's an unsustainable way to live, and when you fail (for a given value of "fail") then you will feel a failure, you will feel worse. Rare indeed is the person who says well, I've stopped drinking, apart from last Thursday, oh, and Saturday, and I'm okay with that, rarer still the right-I'm-going-to-dieter who doesn't bemoan falling for the plump charms of a cream cake. The standard issue human, when falling off their wagon of choice, feels a failure, because that's what we've been conditioned to believe, it's just a matter of wanting it enough, and you didn't, loser.
(This sort of binary thinking is precisely what bedevils certain sectors of our political establishment and callers in to radio programmes about brexit, but that's a piece for another time: there's quite enough of that at the moment elsewhere)
This is not to say that you shouldn't watch what you eat, exercise or try to moderate your drinking; all of these are sensible ways to conduct your existence, and good luck to you. These are all things which it's well within your compass to do, but the scorched-earth concept of a fresh start, a clean break with the past, is not the way to go about it. Far better to acknowledge that there are some things you'd like to change and then set yourself modest and achievable goals, moving on to bigger and better things. The mentality of shoot for the moon is a curious development in public discourse, from magical thinking in politics to the confected "journeys" of reality television, we've become wedded to the idea of all-or-nothing. Of course you should try, and of course you can try, but moderation in all things isn't the worst idea in the world, and especially in trying to be a new you, because the old you's pretty great too, you know.
To which, of course, the only reasonable response is that nobody ever got poor by copying. The attempts to rebrand Easter as Christmas redux (Easter presents?), the bewildering proliferation of days devoted to particular relatives. The various months devoted to sobriety for those for whom Lent just isn't enough, why not New Year's Two, This Time It's An Acknowledgement Of Failure? Because if you'd stuck to those resolutions in the first place, if you really were living your instagrammable best life, then you wouldn't need it. But before we descend too far into grumpy old man territory, I should make it clear that I've got a reason or two why I think this is perhaps not the best way to structure one's life.
The idea of the fresh start is one of the most beguiling lies that we humans tell ourselves. A clean slate, all previous failures washed away, out of sight, out of mind. It's easy to see why it's a tempting idea, but I'd contend that it contains within it the seeds of its own destruction; it is a way of looking at things which is less helpful than simply plodding on. It's doomed to failure, and you will only feel worse.
The reason I take this Eeyore-like view of the concept of dramatic, instantaneous self-improvement is two-fold: firstly, I mistrust easy answers, it generally means someone's trying to sell you something, but secondly, and most pertinently, what this ground zero approach to sorting out whatever needs sorting out does is fail to acknowledge what came before. If I were an alcoholic, I don't cease to be an alcoholic simply because I've stopped drinking (and actual alcoholics of my acquaintance concur with this), for an addict, the day they stop is part of an overall process, not a clean slate, they always have to keep in mind who they were before, because that is who they are still.
This is the great myth of the self-improvement industry, the idea that one can become a different person overnight. Well, you can't, because if you did, you would cease to be you. It's a Stalinesque purge of your personal history which, much like Stalin himself, will fail to conceal what it wishes to do, because people just aren't built like that. It's lovely to tell yourself that one day you'll go for a run, and from that day hence you'll be a runner, five days a week, without fail, it's quite another thing to lace your trainers up at five in the morning on a dank February Tuesday. And the reason that this particular bit of confidence trickery is so destructive to one's mental well-being is that it's an unsustainable way to live, and when you fail (for a given value of "fail") then you will feel a failure, you will feel worse. Rare indeed is the person who says well, I've stopped drinking, apart from last Thursday, oh, and Saturday, and I'm okay with that, rarer still the right-I'm-going-to-dieter who doesn't bemoan falling for the plump charms of a cream cake. The standard issue human, when falling off their wagon of choice, feels a failure, because that's what we've been conditioned to believe, it's just a matter of wanting it enough, and you didn't, loser.
(This sort of binary thinking is precisely what bedevils certain sectors of our political establishment and callers in to radio programmes about brexit, but that's a piece for another time: there's quite enough of that at the moment elsewhere)
This is not to say that you shouldn't watch what you eat, exercise or try to moderate your drinking; all of these are sensible ways to conduct your existence, and good luck to you. These are all things which it's well within your compass to do, but the scorched-earth concept of a fresh start, a clean break with the past, is not the way to go about it. Far better to acknowledge that there are some things you'd like to change and then set yourself modest and achievable goals, moving on to bigger and better things. The mentality of shoot for the moon is a curious development in public discourse, from magical thinking in politics to the confected "journeys" of reality television, we've become wedded to the idea of all-or-nothing. Of course you should try, and of course you can try, but moderation in all things isn't the worst idea in the world, and especially in trying to be a new you, because the old you's pretty great too, you know.
Comments
Post a Comment