Si the years traditionally end at the foot of the Christmas tree, their beginnings are placed under the sign of the “good”: that of the “good wishes” that we must present to those we meet; and the “good resolutions” that one is supposed, at this time, to take for oneself.
This displayed positivity is only very rarely challenged publicly (who would dare admit that he wishes the worst for his department head and has no intention of touching a single one of his – alleged – bad habits?). But the fact that this inflation of good feelings is hardly credible probably explains why resolutions and wishes have become artificial exercises, and a little meaningless, to which one can submit without giving them importance.
Are vows necessarily hypocritical?
Children, who have the art of asking embarrassing questions to adults, often ask: “What does ‘best wishes’ mean? Why do you have to say “Happy New Year”? » While teenagers, in their quest for the truth, rarely fail to denounce what they feel is hypocrisy: saying things you don’t mean, seeming to care about others when you don’t .
Yet for most adults, making vows is such a common practice that they wouldn’t think of asking. Especially since they generally consider it innocuous: if it does no good, it cannot – they are convinced – do any harm.
It may not be as safe as they think. These “Happy New Year!” “, seemingly so innocuous, can indeed be carriers of violence. From this muted violence, so ordinary and unfortunately so banal, which can arise from the perception, even confused, of the indifference of the other, and especially arise from the loneliness to which it refers. If we are not doing very well (because we fear for example that the coming year will not be better than the previous one), the melody of wishes, sung by people who have no use for this that we live, can in the long run begin to squeak.
And this should be taken into account, because many people today, psychologically weakened – and, in a way that is not sufficiently taken into account, by the difficulties that accumulate in their material life – say, as long as we agree to listen to them, how much they suffer from a world whose indifference violents them.
Should vows be abolished?
Of course not ! Especially since the times give us more than ever reason to wish ourselves many things, and first of all an increased capacity to resist difficulties and adapt to change. On the contrary, we must give them meaning and make them an opportunity for an exchange with the other, which, even very short, can be warm and true. And all you have to do is take the words seriously.
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