Newness: The Illusion Every Year

I have always struggled with writing, it makes me question my thoughts, I spend hours researching, more hours loathing what I have written and the end process some article like this. But one day I found myself excited about the process of writing, I told myself perhaps I am a conventional writer. My words bleed with ink rather than a keyboard and somehow convinced my dad that the only thing that is stopping from being tomorrow’s Bukowski, is a new fountain pen.

Two Months Later

I held Sheaffer in my hand, this lustrous little piece of my heart. Picked up the pace like other pens never did. It was new and perfect. But, somehow it gradually became just a fountain pen, not a wand that turned me into Bukowski.

“How deluded!” you might think, but aren’t we all? Every year, people fall trap to this False Hope Syndrome unknowingly starting to develop an unjustifiably higher optimism with themselves.

It seems possible to them that when the clock will strike 12:00 on new year eve, they would magically change into their best possible self. They would wake up to a better version of themselves. And if it doesn’t happen, which it can’t, they end up into a downward spiral of self-hatred.

We, sapiens, seem to really fascinate the idea of newness. Seamlessly associate all our false expectation with it, but why are there so inflated irrational hopes around newness?

New Year, New You

Brewer in 1997 suggested it was because the idea of change is perceived to be quick and feasible. This might be why there is a huge popularity of campaigns that pops around at the end of every December. New Year, New You.

However, Mr Diderot, in his essay “Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown”, had a different take on this. He defined this obsession of newness as one’s innate desire to re-create their identity for a higher esteem boost. A new entity via which one can forgo their past identity, a shortcut for being viewed as more prestigious.

Already 15 days from the new year have slipped by. Perhaps you didn’t wake up to an actualized version of yourself. The same way as my new fountain pen didn’t magically transform me into a writer.

Maybe, it is time to rethink the new and cripple ourselves with immense efforts and hard work. Perhaps on second thought, lets newness delude us. Well, in any case, I am purchasing a new typewriter and a cigar because Bukowski smoked and typed.