To hell with resolutions. I’m just going to start right and keep going.
New Year resolutions. What’s your take? Are you an eye-rolling cynic? A self-confessed self-help junkie committed to bettering your life? A bored social media gadabout with nothing better to tweet about? Or maybe one of those ‘everyone-else-is-doing-it-so-why-not-me?’ fellas.
It doesn’t matter. Resolutions can be pretty useless when made up on the fly, and those made at the new year, even more so. Who’s to say what you propose will come to pass 48 hours on? Who’s to say you will even want to? But the fact is, the idea of a new year is not so much chronological as much as it is forgiving, relenting, benevolent even. A little bit like rain. Stay with me; I’ll explain.
Like rain, a new year is like life giving you another chance. To fix, to break, to walk away, to walk back, to renew, to revise, to revel, to repel, to engage, to disconnect, to undo, unmake, unfuck up. The new year is like life stepping back from giving you a hiding and saying, “go on, go. Get out of here.” The new year is like time saying, “I’m going to slow down so you can decide exactly what next. You can decide. You can choose. You have a choice. Now go make the right one.”
The new year is a moment of reckoning. And it isn’t, but you can make it so. You can make it anything you want. That is what the new year is.
I think resolutions have a good heart but don’t always have the impetus to make it through. So what if you did away with the entire resolution business – it’s all Hallmark trollop anyway – and wrote down what you’d like to do better this year? Or how you’d like to live differently, or think differently. You have to start somewhere, and maybe this time you might just end up somewhere… else. It’s a start. And it’s always good to start right. And start at the beginning. I mean, where else would you start?
1. Tell someone you love that you love them on a more regular basis. To their face. Not via SMS.
2. Prune your Facebook friends list. Ditto your Twitter follows. Less is always more.
3. Is it absolutely essential to broadcast whatever you’re doing to the world? Probably not. Say less. Mean more.
4. Call your parents. You might not have them for much longer and then there won’t be any calling left to do.
5. Eat your vegetables.
6. Learn something new every day. A word. A tune. How something works. Where you get the best dim sum in town. Something. Then teach someone else.
7. Be patient with others. But more importantly, be patient with yourself. Tides turn. Good things WILL come.
8. Teach yourself the art of letting go. With grace. It’s not worth holding on to that which doesn’t hold on to you.
9. Read, read, read. The more you know the less you need.
10. Hold her hand. Hold his.
11. Take your time. Get to know someone before sleeping with them.
12. When provoked, don’t respond immediately. And in anger, never.
13. Don’t start something you know you can’t finish or see through to the end. Be it a relationship, or dessert.
14. Save your money. There are more rainy days than you will ever account for.
15. Put away just Rs. 100 a day. In a ceramic jar, a hand-painted box, a sock. 365 days later you will have a small fortune.
16. Make someone laugh. Even if it is at your own expense. Especially if it is at your own expense.
17. Try not retaliating for a change. Imagine what would happen if you just didn’t respond. If you just… let things be.
18. Vulnerability is power. Don’t give away your power.
19. Don’t be afraid to give. Money, possessions, time. The Universe dictates that it return to you thousandfold. It’s true.
20. If you are a fighter, put down your arms. If you are a doormat, take up your swords. This is a time for change.
21. Be your own parent. Be the daddy you never had. Be the mother you knew never. Love, and bring yourself up again.
22. Let people deserve you. You deserve that.
23. If someone wants to steal your thunder, let them. You don’t need to steal. Remember, you created that thunder.
24. Pretend to not hear an insult. Never dignify it with a response. And drop ill-mannered runts the first chance you get.
25. Distinguish between anger and hurt. Don’t talk when in the throes of either. Add passion to that.
26. Spend less time with devices and more time with living, breathing organisms. Even a cactus is better for you than Facebook.
27. Look at art. It is trying to say something to us. Listen to it.
28. Make time for old-timers. They are living archives of stories, mannerisms, euphemisms, ideas. And they will die.
29. Clean your belly button.
30. Stop talking like the Kardashians. Stop watching the Kardashians. Please. Your brain is falling out of your ears.
31. Wishing people via social media DOES NOT COUNT. Write a card. Pick the phone. They deserve that much.
32. Whatever the occasion, give people books.
33. Do what it takes to go meet someone who looks forward to you.
34. It’s okay to not know everything. It’s even more okay to ask questions. People LOVE talking about what they know well.
35. Know that one person you want to get to know better? Do it. It might be a complete waste. Then again, it might not.
36. Be it exercise, or food, what you wear or whom you decide to give it to, treat your body with respect.
37. Don’t underestimate the value of personal space. Your own & that of others. Absence makes the heart grow crazy for you.
That’s my start right. The way I see it, fuck resolutions. I’m just going to start right and keep going.
I am as curious as they come and I want to know what your start-the-year-right ideas are, so please share.
