Resolutions
A new year, a new beginning…!
It’s the beginning of another year. Another revolution of our planet around the ball of fire we call our sun, another 365 days completed, looking forward to 366 this time around. As I grow older, the meaning and significance of a new year keeps changing. Or maybe, I keep changing with the passing of time.
I haven’t been one to care about changes of dates. January first is just another change of date, as is a birthday, or an anniversary. I have, however, always been ready to celebrate. I never needed a reason to but if the world gives me a change of date as the reason, I am not one to refuse it.
There were New Year’s Eves where I partied until the sun came up, and others where I was in bed by nine. But one thing that every new year brought was resolutions. Every year my mother started with a list of resolutions – some shared, others not - and she ended each year with an account of how it went. This was a tradition growing up in our home. She would ask us about our resolutions at the beginning of the year and urged us to summarize our year on December 31st. I did it with excitement as a child but as I grew older – I became a teenager, didn’t I?
I did not like making resolutions. I did not know what resolutions to make, and I surely knew that I wasn’t going to stick to my resolutions. But she asked us anyway and we went along with it some years and rebelled on others. Little did I know that this little exercise would become a part of my life whether I willed it or not.
No, I do not make new year’s resolutions, but I cannot help but spend the last week of December looking back at the year. Some years noticing an overwhelming feeling of triumph, others feeling heartbreak, while some others wondering how and when it had passed me by. And although I do not make resolutions, by the end of the first week of January I often find that I have a set of goals that I never formally made.
Like this year when my friend asked me about my resolutions on Monday, I waxed eloquent about the futility of the exercise, then promptly by Friday was writing a post on it. Because somewhere along that week I had a moment or two – driving my car, or sipping that coffee by myself, or brushing my teeth. Moments where I said to myself, “This year I am going to take it Pole Pole (a term I learnt last year in Tanzania that means ‘slowly slowly’)” or “I am going to be kinder – to others but also to myself” or “I am going to ensure I post more regularly” or…
This process will go on in my head for a while and one day it will stop, unnoticed. Stop until that last week of December when it will come back to me, again unnoticed. It is a lesson in accountability that I learned from my mother without realizing then the gift she was giving me.
So, what resolutions have you made for the year, and how will you keep yourself accountable? Do let us know in the comments below.