New Years is a pretty controversial subject. The world seems to be split between those who hate it and those who pretend not to hate it. It begins with the neverending build up and multiple plans in multiple group chats, the majority of which will always fall through. Then there’s the inevitable expectation that this New Years Eve will be the most amazing night of your life, despite the fact that you normally spend it on a footpath queing to get into another overpacked club. And finally there’s the dismal wait for a non-existent taxi in the lashing rain. The hype alone would be annoying enough even without the eventual letdown. Then there’s the nagging belief that everybody else had the most amazing New Year ever.
All of this doesn’t even account for the ever present “new year new me” rubbish. While New Years resolutions can be helpful we often put far too much belief in them. And this belief is far too often misplaced. From getting fit to finding love our resolutions are usually extremely vague and quite unrealistic.
The idea of New Years can also be quite misleading, it’s almost as if we believe we become completely different people once the clock strikes midnight. This belief causes us to ignore our previous mistakes and can be quite disheartening, it practically erases everything you’ve achieved the previous year. Personally I prefer to think of New Years as a time to build on what I’ve become. I am not suddenly a brand new person, fresh out of the womb but rather someone who has survived another year and who hopes to thrive in the next year.
I wondered if I was the only person who was sceptical about New Years so I chatted to some of your typical youths and most agreed with me, saying New Years was “overrated” and full of “unnecessary pressures”. But they did comment on the fact that it can help people to better themselves and improve their lives. One of my friends loves New Years Eve she likes kicking it off with a bang and believes that no matter how short lived an improvement is it is still an improvement. But the overall consensus was that at the end of the day it’s just another day.
I mean January 1st didn’t become New Years Day until 46BC when Julius Caesar decided that was the case and we all know how popular he was. Then of course, there’s the fact that time is made up so, really, who cares how you spend New Years, just live your life.
