Editorial: New year's resolutions to defy Covid 19 coronavirus

Author and celebrated wit Oscar Wilde said resolutions are vanity but their "results are nil". One can only wonder what he would make of 2020. Photo / NZ Herald Archives

EDITORIAL

Day two of 2021 and how many New Year's resolutions are still holding?

As Weekend Herald journalist Kim Knight writes today: Remember when we made New Year's resolutions with certainty? We would say, "This is my year."

This past year taught us the harsh truth of the old Yiddish adage: "Man plans, and God laughs."

It would seem on the face of it to be pointless making resolutions when one wrong sneeze could turn our lives inside out again. Even in pre-Covid times, some estimates had it that 22 per cent of people who made New Year resolutions admitted failure after only a week, 40 per cent at a month, 50 per cent at three months, and 81 per cent after two years. What chance do we have?

Why do we make them then? For the same reason the old saying about God laughing is so affecting, even after all this time. A resolution is our attempt to wrest back some control over our destiny, to defy God's laughter.

Of resolutions, Oscar Wilde said (as he said most things best): "Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil."

But surely, once a year, we're permitted a little vanity, even if the chances of betterment for ourselves are remote?

For those who are still hanging in there on a New Year's resolution today: Go, you good thing. No pressure, but we're pinning our hopes on you to laugh in the face of these mad times.