The promises we keep making, and breaking

Every year, as fairy lights spill onto balconies and cafés buzz with end-of-year plans, we sit down with our Notes app and convince ourselves that this time will be different. We write resolutions with the confidence of someone signing a contract with their future self. New year, new habits, new us, “Inshallah”.

But if we’re honest, Lebanese resolutions follow a familiar cycle: enthusiasm in January, negotiations by February, and quiet disappearance by March.

Fitness always tops the list. January gyms are packed with hope, new sneakers, and playlists ready for transformation. By mid-February, real life returns: long workdays, family lunches that turn into feasts, late nights that blur into early mornings. The gym card doesn’t vanish; it just becomes symbolic. We don’t quit. We postpone. “Next week,” we say, and somehow next week becomes next year.

Then comes the diet. Less bread, fewer sweets, no late-night delivery. On paper, it’s reasonable. In Lebanon, it’s almost offensive. Manousheh, kibbeh, mloukhiyeh, and Sunday lunches that stretch into the evening turn discipline into diplomacy. Someone always insists, “One plate won’t hurt.” And they’re right. Food here isn’t just fuel, it’s family, memory, comfort. So the salad waits, untouched, while life carries on.

Saving money is another hopeful promise. We start the year optimistic, budgeting carefully, planning for travel, emergencies, and a calmer future. Then reality intervenes. A car repair. A birthday. A sudden outing. By spring, the budget has been rewritten more times than the constitution. It’s not that we don’t want to save, it’s that living here requires flexibility more than rigid plans.

We also vow to stress less. To breathe, disconnect, sleep earlier, avoid drama. And then there’s traffic, power cuts during meetings, unsettling news alerts, deadlines, bills. Peace becomes something we chase, not something we own. Still, the desire remains. And maybe trying, even clumsily, still counts.

Reading more books makes the list too. We buy them, photograph them, promise ourselves twenty a year. We read a few chapters, then life interrupts. The books sit patiently on the bedside table, quiet witnesses to good intentions. Maybe the goal isn’t quantity. Maybe it’s finishing one, slowly, with joy.

And then there’s the promise to spend less time on our phones. We swear we’ll be present, put the screen down. But everything lives there now: work, family, news, memories, distractions, escape. We scroll without noticing. It’s not failure. It’s habit. One we’re still learning how to unlearn.

Yet despite all this, there’s something deeply beautiful about the ritual. Every resolution is an act of hope. A belief that change is possible, that the future might be kinder, that we can become better versions of ourselves. Lebanese people are natural dreamers. Even in uncertainty, we plan. We imagine. We hope.

Maybe resolutions don’t stick because life here refuses to follow neat timelines. It moves in surprises, interruptions, and small victories. And that’s okay. A week of walking. A month of saving. One finished book. A calm morning. A better choice, once.

So write your resolutions again this year, even if they look exactly like last year’s. Not because you need to transform overnight, but because believing in change is a form of resilience. If all we do is try, adapt, and keep going with a little grace, maybe that’s more than enough.

Because what truly matters isn’t the resolution itself, but the hope behind it. The quiet voice that says, maybe this year could be different. And even if it isn’t, we’ll meet again next December, pen in hand, ready to hope all over again.

Dreams, like the Lebanese spirit, don’t expire.