Resolutions not for these great minds

Benjamin Franklin, one of the most celebrated overachievers in American history, insisted on seeing the dawning of a new year as an opportunity to become an improved version of his former self.

“Be always at war with your vices,” he reminded the slackers and ne’er-do-wells, “at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.”

While I would not normally quarrel with the wisdom of so keen a mind as Franklin’s, I have to disagree with his observations on the character-cleansing potential of the new year. His advice is largely impractical and doomed to failure.

It seems to me that any individual who is always at war with his vices can never hope to be at peace with his neighbors. Just ask anyone who has had to live with a person who is hurriedly trying to get into shape after a lifetime of sloth, lose weight on the latest miracle diet, get organized, cut back on alcohol consumption or any of the other healthful resolutions we earnestly tend to make for ourselves while we’re celebrating New Year’s Eve with that third glass of champagne in our hands.

Even if we do wind up bettering ourselves, as Franklin urged we do, no one will be able to stand being around us while we pursue our noble goals.

In my experience, most of these calendar-driven, life-altering resolutions turn out to be a waste of time in the long run. I’ve made so many vows over the years that I have no room left for new ones. My backlog of unfulfilled resolutions already provides me a lifetime of opportunity for failure, should I finally muster the discipline to actually declare war on my vices and set out to vanquish them.

Yet whenever I start to feel guilty about my woeful lack of willpower, which usually happens about a month after the ball falls in Times Square, I have only to look to the world’s great minds to find solace for my troubled conscience.

“Good resolutions,” wrote the esteemed Oscar Wilde, “are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”

It’s also comforting to know I have no less brilliant a social observer in my court than old Mark Twain, who shared a similarly jaundiced view of this seasonal exercise in frustration.

Jan. 1, he famously wrote, “is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual … New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks and friendly calls for humbug resolutions.”

The writer Anais Nin, as it turns out, didn’t put much stock in New Year’s resolutions either: “The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.”

Then there’s Andre Gide, who posed a question that baby boomers bent on sudden self-improvement must wrestle with today: “Can one still make resolutions when one is over forty?” he asked. “I live according to twenty-year-old habits.”

The way I see it, I’m in pretty good company in the anti-resolution camp.

But if you’re the kind of person who prefers the Ben Franklin approach to the new year – in which case, my sincerest best wishes for success – you might want to do yourself a favor and heed the advice of John Selden.

“Never tell your resolution beforehand,” the 17th century jurist wisely said, “or it’s twice as onerous a duty.”