On New Year's R/evolutions
Art by @spaceinkshop
First published on Jan 15, 2025
This is part of a running series. Read the previous Wonder Chronicle: On Sequins
When we were children, my brother and I liked to stay up past midnight on New Year’s Eve so that we could jokingly boast that we stayed up for a year.
What is it about the New Year that makes us so silly? As if overnight we can become someone else via the alchemy of resolutions.
Around 2000 BC, the Babylonians are said to have been the first people to mark the New Year with resolutions. For them, the year began not in January but in mid-March, when the crops were planted and they crowned a new king or reaffirmed their loyalty to the reigning king during a 12-day religious festival known as Akitu,
“They also made promises to the gods to pay their debts and return any objects they had borrowed,” according to History.com. “If the Babylonians kept to their word, their (pagan) gods would bestow favor on them for the coming year. If not, they would fall out of the gods’ favor—a place no one wanted to be.”
The Ancient Romans adopted the Babylonian tradition of New Year's resolutions but in 46 BC moved the New Year to January named for Janus, the two-faced god Romans believed symbolically looked backwards into the previous year and ahead into the future. Romans offered sacrifices to the deity and made promises of good conduct for the coming year.
And millenia later, we are still looking backwards and ahead, tenacious in our optimism that what is to come will be better than what we left behind, if only we resolve to—(fill in the blank).
The joy of reinvention. New Year. New You. New Life. A fresh start.
But why wait until Janus looks backwards and ahead to tap into that joy?
What if every day was a New Year, worthy of the alchemy of reinvention?
There are at least 20 New Years celebrated somewhere around the world. During almost every month of the year, someone somewhere is marking that tenaciously optimistic delight in newness.
Imagine–a chance every month to reinvent ourselves.
Why just imagine?
What if every day was a New Year, worthy of the alchemy of reinvention?
What is the most outlandish resolution you’ve ever made? After you’ve laughed a bit at your foolish optimism, reflect that resolution is just one letter away from revolution, and that to resolve and to revolve can be the two faces of your daily Janus.
Become a weapon of mass construction of your many selves. Resolve to overthrow yourself every day. Instigate the r/evolution of a new me, myself, and I. Every day. Now.
“we need a r/evolution of the mind. we need a r/evolution of the heart. we need a r/evolution of the spirit,” Assata Shakur said. “the power of the people is stronger than any weapon. a people’s r/evolution can’t be stopped. we need to be weapons of mass construction. weapons of mass love. it’s not enough just to change the system. we need to change ourselves.”
Become a weapon of mass construction of your many selves. Resolve to overthrow yourself every day. Instigate the r/evolution of a new me, myself, and I. Every day. Now.
My goal: that you are found by wonder.
My wish: that you intensely live.
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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell!: Adventures in Menopause from Across the World. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
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