The only resolution worth making

it's me, Pollyanna

I don’t think that this is the right time of year for resolutions - they make much more sense at a time of rebirth, like the beginning of Spring, or at a time of organisation, like back-to-school September. It seems to me that everyone should look after themselves especially well in January, which is so bleak and long and which calls for treats and indulgence, not the giving up of things. Why be a martyr if you don’t have to be? Carbs and furry throws exist for a reason, and it is called January. (Also February).

But there is one good and achievable thing you can do for yourself and for your year ahead. It sounds insultingly simple and glib, the sort of thing that used to make me roll my eyes so hard that it gave me a headache, so please bear with me. It isn’t in fact simple or glib, and I’ll get to why in a second.

To me, the only resolution worth making is ‘I choose to be happy’.

Yes, I know. ‘I choose to be happy’ looks beyond idiotic written down, one of those ludicrous feel-good platitudes that don’t bear examination. It presupposes that you somehow also choose to be unhappy, or sad, or anxious, or in a state of total abject misery. Obviously nobody chooses to be unhappy. And often - though not always - the unhappiness or sorrow or misery are more to do with other people, or with situations we can’t control, than with our own actions.

The spectrum of unhappiness ranges from ‘bit meh’ to ‘I dunno, I just don’t really like the way my life feels,’ to ‘catatonic’. So before I continue, I should make it clear that you should of course always seek professional help for depression that won’t shift, in exactly the same way that you’d seek professional help if you were permanently in pain in any other way (nobody ever goes ‘maybe this axe that’s embedded in my head will ease its way out by itself’). Illness requires treatment.

But here’s what I’d say to everybody else.