Outline: New year resolutions are hardly put into practice – my new year resolution to rise early – hoe I broke it.
The approach of a New Year stirs in us a desire to shake off old habits and to turn over a new leaf. On the eve of the New Year’s Day we resolve to give up our vicious habits, to take exercise every day, to get up early in the morning, or to answer letters promptly. Making good resolution is a wonderful experience; you feel morally elevated, while there is no call immediate action since the resolutions are to be put into practice from tomorrow. But as everybody knows, New Year resolutions are honoured more in breach than in practice. This doesn’t mean that they deserve to be ridiculed. After all, there is bound to be a gap between promise and performance, dream and reality.
I am a late riser. Once, carried away by the advice of my elders, I made a New Year resolution to rise early. With a tremendous effort of will I succeeded in getting up at dawn for a week. My parents complimented me on my strong will. Though I left proud and flattered, because I was able to put a good resolution into practice, I sorely missed my morning slumber with its sweet dreams and soothing effect. While early rising was an intoxicating experience for one or two days, it was about to become a dull habit.
It was the eighth day of the New Year. The crowing of a cock woke me up with a jolt. There was a nip in the air and a cold wind was blowing outside. I was extremely reluctant to get up and remembered Macbeth’s praise of sleep (“sleep that up the ravell’d sleeve of care” and so on). But my New Year resolution stood in the way of my enjoying what seemed to me to be the greatest pleasure on earth. I thought that my New Year resolution was an artificial restriction I had imposed upon myself. It appeared to me to be a symbol of tyranny, oppression, while my desire to sleep on stood for liberty, revolution and progress. I always believed in liberty and progress, and in the struggle that took place in the arena of my mind, the forces of liberty and progress triumphed. I thus responded to the call of slumber and broke my New Year resolution.
