Plenty of people think New Year's resolutions are a waste of time, that they are fleeting hopes divorced from reality.
Why bother when those fine thoughts are likely to be unrealistic, forgotten by morning or inappropriate?
What can actually be achieved in this hard, cynical world?
What is the point of striving for impossible ideals when all we are doing is setting ourselves up for failure?
This is a bleak view of the human race and its potential, and it promises a shallow life devoid of real satisfaction and fulfilment.
The much better alternative does not dismiss selfishness, sloth, greed and cruelty, all so evident in individual, community and international relationships.
Rather, it recognises capacity for altruism, commitment and compassion.
Rather, it knows, as religions have proclaimed, that helping others is a means to helping oneself and that it can be better to give than receive.
Even many of those corny popular aphorisms have threads of truth in them.
Human history does, indeed, show that aspiration, along with its cousin inspiration, affects people and societies.
Fearfully, as the damage wrought by religious, ideological, racial or nationalist fervour illustrates, this can easily become misguided and dangerous.
But ideals, goals and purpose pointed in the right direction benefit both individuals and communities.
This is the time of year when the New Year honours are announced.
Celebrated are luminaries such as Sir Bruce Robertson, who lived in Dunedin until he became a High Court judge, or former prime minister Helen Clark, who joins the exclusive and elite Order of New Zealand, or film-maker Sir Peter Jackson, Lord of the Rings and now knight of the realm.
Noted, too, are a range of citizens, from well-known sports figures to everyday community members, who have undertaken sterling service.
Those in the latter group deserve special praise, because what they have achieved has usually been behind the scenes and invariably follows countless hours of dedication.
They are people like John McLellan, and his outstanding Moeraki search and rescue efforts, Helen Huddleston, of Balclutha, who moved from being a full-time mother to volunteering in various community roles and most especially in "grassroots" rugby, or Rita Marlow, who gave thousands of hours of her time in the cause of gymnastics.
Lester Harvey, receiving the QSM for services to the community, is another of whom we all can be proud.
As well as serving on a string of boards and societies, he spent 18,000 voluntary hours planting trees and helping beautify the railway embankment from Wingatui to Riccarton Rd.
His response to the award? "Mosgiel has always been very good to me."
The honouring by the Crown of these people is fitting, acknowledging effort and various sacrifices of one sort or another.
Their recognition is society turning around and saying: "Well done. You have been very good to us."
These are the types of people who get stuck in and who make our communities healthy places.
Not for them bitter cynicism, impossible dreams, self aggrandisement or pursuit of possessions and power.
They, and plenty of others of similar ilk, are the practical, useful, no-nonsense characters on which society is built.
They act locally and realistically.
They - and the others like them in ways large and small who have not received formal national appreciation - can all truly contemplate successful lives well lived.
They are our everyday and next-door exemplars and inspirations.
Nothing is wrong with a New Year's resolution to aspire to be, or in fact in many cases continue to be, like them, to contribute more to society and to others in whatever way we can.
That is an admirable resolution for 2010.
