Resolution

I guess we've all done it — embraced a heap of New Year's Resolutions only to let them clatter from our grasp before January was out.

This cycle of unrequited ambition follows in a venerable tradition. The Babylonians made promises to the Gods at the start of each year — that they would return items borrowed and satisfy their debts, and the Romans pledged their promises to Janus after whom January is named. And there cannot surely be a worthy endeavour that someone at some time has not signed up to on the cusp of the year.

The fact that so many fail to meet these commitments is a refection not just of the eternal allure of lofty ideals but perhaps also of the diminished personal discipline of modern times.

We don't, of course, all have the single-minded resolve of Simeon of Stylites, a 5th century saint whose resolution stretched to a breath-taking display of the kind of ecclesiastical gymnastics so popular of that age — he lived on top of a column for 37 years.

For about the time that Simeon perched on his pole I have made New Year's resolutions. Most were quickly broken. So this year I have been unambitious. Before becoming an MP I used to devour novels and I have promised myself that I will re-read one of my favourites before year-end. Perhaps F Scott FitzGerald's 'The Great Gatsby', the closing paragraph of which beautifully frames the inevitability of unfulfilled resolution:

'Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms out farther . . . And one fine morning — So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.'