New Years Restitution

Another year has come and gone, a new one is upon us and of course that means everyone and their dog is making some sort of resolution. I am not sure why it is that people need to wait until a certain date to promise to do something for themselves that they probably promised themselves last year and the year before that... and the one before that. I am not saying that people shouldn't strive for self improvement and set goals but how motivated are you really if you have to wait until the first day of the new year to start it? I think that maybe what we need instead of making a resolution to do something next year that we failed to do by the second or third month of the current year is self acceptance. I know when we are knee high to a grasshopper we are all told that we can be whatever we want to be if we put in enough effort. Unfortunately that is just not true, while there are things that you can accomplish through hard work there are also things that no matter how hard you try you just aren't going to change... if you are five foot tall no amount of trying, wishing or resolving is going to make you six foot tall, we all have different genetics, different strengths and different struggles; no two of us are alike and we should never judge our own happiness based on other peoples opinions about us. Instead of trying to figure out what it is about ourselves that we think we need to change maybe we need to figure out why it is we don't like whatever it is about ourselves that we want to change. I think for a lot of us some of the things we think we need to change to be happy are things that society tells us we should change about ourselves which is why we continually fail. Society tells us we should all be thin, we should all be non-smokers, we should all dress alike, look alike, act alike, think alike, basically we should all conform to "the norm". Maybe we fail at resolutions because deep down inside we don't really think whatever it is we resolve to change really needs to be changed as much as we feel we SHOULD change it because we are told we should. If you don't like to go to the gym and you are relatively healthy, why force yourself to go to the gym because someone told you that you need to lose 15lbs... as long as what you like to do isn't illegal and doesn't harm anyone else why let someone else tell you that you need to change? I guess the way to tell if you are serious about making a change in your life for yourself is when you do it, changes made by you for you are those made on any given Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday of the year, those are the changes we truly want to make. The ones we need to "resolve" to make are probably those destine to fail because of a lack of real desire. I have no resolution this year much like I didn't have one last year, I have goals for this year but most of those goals are a continuation of goals from last year built on a foundation of hard work over a course of a life time not decisions I felt I needed to make on a whim because it's a new year. This year maybe we all need to give our selves a New Years Restitution... to give our lives back to ourselves and to do whatever it is that makes us happy and to give the finger to all of those who think we need to do something different because they aren't happy with our choices. This year maybe we should choose to love ourselves for who we are and not who we think we need to be.