I have reached the age where my New Year’s resolutions arrive pre-broken. I know which ones will fail, roughly when they will fail, and what excuses I will make afterward. I will not lose the weight, I will not get up early, I will not meditate in the morning, I will not file columns on time. And I will not — this I know with particular certainty — stop telling small white lies to get out of social obligations I don’t want to keep. A person with real integrity would resolve to stop doing that in 2026. I am not that person.
I am, however, a person with a skill. That skill is inventing plausible excuses at short notice. So instead of resolving to stop lying — a resolution destined for the same quiet failure as all the others — I’m resolving to lie better. To put some elbow into it. To invest a few actual brain cycles in coming up with untruths that are believable, memorable, and internally consistent. Look, if I’m going to remain a liar in 2026 — and trust me, I am — I might as well shoot for excellence.
For instance, instead of saying something like, I wish I could accept that amazing invitation! Unfortunately, I’ll be out of town, I might say, I wish! But that weekend I have already agreed to participate in a medical study involving LSD. See? It’s interesting, it gets me out of the obligation, and it’s just unsettling enough to end the conversation. The point is, I know myself. I am not going to stop wriggling out of social engagements. But now, I’m going to do it with some flair.
The importance of self-knowledge was reinforced for me recently by a conversation with someone young enough to have already figured out what most of us, well, me, keep trying to dodge: that real growth does not begin with pretending to be better, but with being honest about who you actually are.
That conversation was with my niece, who is in high school and, like many people her age, is both funny and blunt in a way that adults find impossible. She told me, calmly and without drama, that when she looks back on her early middle school years, she remembers herself as a “mean girl.” Not vicious, not theatrical, just someone who enjoyed the quiet power of being inside a group that could decide who was out.
What impressed me was not the confession. It was the clarity that followed. She told me she made a decision not to be that person anymore. She was not apologizing for who she was, nor was she pretending it had not happened. But when she decided who she wanted to be — in reality, realizing the person she truly was — she adjusted her friend group, made the necessary changes, and moved on.
It is a strange thing, I suppose, for a 60-year-old man to say that he is taking wisdom lessons from a 16-year-old girl. But the first step in self-knowledge is recognizing that you can learn important lessons from everyone.
My niece did not resolve to become a better person in the abstract. She identified a version of herself she did not like and made it harder to become that person again. That is what integrity looks like, apparently, when it’s not making up stories about why it can’t go to a dinner party.
THE TRUMP PENCIL DOCTRINE TOWARD CHRISTMAS PRESENTS
Look: I am still going to tell small white lies to get out of things I don’t want to do. But I am at least trying to stop lying to myself about why my grand resolutions fail. They fail because they are aimed at an imaginary version of me, rather than the actual one.
Being a better version of yourself, I have learned, is not about reinvention. It’s about self-recognition — knowing who you already are, who you have (maybe unfortunately) been, and which version of yourself you want to invest in. If I can manage that in 2026, along with a few truly excellent excuses, I’ll consider it a successful year. And if I can’t, I have a year to come up with a really riveting (and believable) excuse.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
