Breaking Resolutions

Year after year, after year. Resolutions are made and broken in moments.

“I’ll start tomorrow.”

“I have plenty of time to finish.”“Oh well, I’ve already failed. Might as well try again next year.”

It’s the same every single time. People make their resolutions or their “goals” for the New Year. Yet, almost no one, and I mean no one, ever completes them. Why make a goal if you never complete it? Why tell everyone you know and even strangers on the street that you will be a “new person”? Maybe it’s because of the tradition humans have built up over time. Maybe it’s just the need to feel included in what everyone else is doing.

Whatever it is, people need to be far more wary of the goals they make for the New Year. Resolutions pertaining to the beginning of the New Year have been celebrated for a very long time, dating all the way back to 2000 B.C. from the Babylonians. What could have made them start this well-known tradition? Did they know of the consequences that would happen if they failed? Such an “interesting” human ritual. Maybe it was created to make them feel accomplished, more in control of their lives. So, why is it that people seem almost… eager to break them right after they are created?

Breaking one too many resolutions for the New Year might bring in more than you bargain for. What if you were told that breaking as little as fifty resolutions made for the New Year put you on a cosmic list? You would probably laugh right in that poor soul’s face at the absurdity of the story. A cosmic list for breaking resolutions? How silly. How childish. How… morbid…

Let’s say this cosmic list is real. What happens then? What does this so-called list mean? Why do you have to be placed on it for a few silly broken promises about the new year. Well, you’re placed on the list after not just breaking any promise, but a promise to the new year itself. Many have been placed on this list, but many only make it after living for sixty or so years since much of the population only makes a single resolution for the coming year. By then, they are well off on their way to the great beyond and will be dealt with then.

However, the unlucky few who make more than one resolution every year and never even complete just one… Meet a different fate. It’s always the ambitious ones who make the most and never follow through. The ones that lie to themselves and those around them about becoming someone new. They’re the ones that fall quickest. The ones that are judged not too long after being placed on the list.

Each year is made by a new being, something that remembers the past and knows the future. Something that knows the promises that will be made to it and then broken. And it is not kind to the ones that lie. How would you feel if someone told you that they would do something big or even something small and then suddenly they broke their word? You would never trust them as well as you did before. You would even be disappointed in them for not only lying to you but also disappointed in their lie to themselves. But you would give them a new chance, wouldn’t you? A way to try again and fix the lie they told? Of course you would. And so would the New Year.

Unfortunately, even a cosmic being loses patience and forgiveness. So, it set a limit to how many could be broken. Fifty. Just fifty. And then a warning that you’ve been placed on its list. Why should you be worried about being placed on this list? What could happen to you?

Well, a lot could happen to you. Your human knowledge of the universe is limited. A small grain of sand in the vast expanse of life.

Bad luck follows you after being placed on the list. It serves as your warning that you only have one more chance to amend your mistakes.

Fifty-one is when the New Year collects what it is owed from the past. The punishment can range from anything, depending on whether your resolutions were all big or small ones. Whether they were for good or selfish reasons.

Fifty-one broken small resolutions that were more to yourself than anything? A small punishment of losing your youthful life. Were they made in a good mind or selfish reasoning? If the resolutions were good for you and many others, the older you age. The greater they would have helped or done good for others, the more years you lose. If they were selfish, then the being is a little relieved you did not accomplish them due to how many could have been physically or emotionally hurt by it. The years you lose is smaller.

However, breaking big resolutions… Leads to larger consequences. Punishment is needed, after all, for breaking something so important. Blindness for telling yourself you’ll stop being a bystander in things? Deafness for pretending not to hear the pleas of those around you? Maybe a terminal illness to make you regret every single broken resolution? To make you realize the harm that you truly caused with each one broken. To make you watch as your “tomorrow” fades away. As your “next year” becomes bleak. It’s already too late to fix anything, so just wait patiently for pain to fade away.

Ah, I was rambling again, wasn’t I? Such an interesting reason to make sure you follow through on your resolution, though.

Now, how many have you broken? Fifty-one, right?

Credit: Desi Shade