Editorial: Time looms for another new start

New Years Resolutions

Apart from "it's the thought that counts" the most commonly heard phrase at this immediate post-Christmas time is "where did the year go?"

Simple, same place as all the previous years have gone ... disappeared into time.

It's just that as one fires a few more years on to the old human odometer it seems to go quicker.

Which in terms of pushing the inclement winters out of the way and getting on with spring is a very good thing.

But in terms of measuring a summer it has the same, though opposite, effect.

One third of the official season of summer has pretty well already gone.

Cue the opening line again ... "where did it go?"

So here we are, on the cusp of the year of 2014, and that's just fine and dandy by me because those numerals add up to seven and that can be a lucky number.

One has to look at the positives.

And for many people the start of a new year means the start of maybe a new approach to things.

A new way of dealing with some deep-set old way of going about day-to-day duties.

It is called the New Year's resolution and has been around for a a very long time.

At the end of a calendar year the ancient Babylonians would make promises to their gods that they would sort out any debts and return things they had borrowed and which did not belong to them.

In the days of the old Roman empire the folk would start the new year with a promise to the god Janus ... a promise to be good and kind and all that sort of thing.

Then they'd go to war and wipe out some ill-equipped country but that's by the by.

The resolutions have always been to start doing something good for yourself or someone else, and stopping doing something bad.

So it's a worthy pursuit in the long run, although I daresay about 98 per cent of people, after Christmas fare and fizz, generally resolve to "lose a few kilos".

Which is very good ... because it means they can spend the following 365 days slowly sliding back off the wagon knowing that come January 1 next year they can start all over again.

I have a New Year's resolution, and it is to make no more New Year's resolutions.

Have a safe start to the year.