today in the remedial course class ( remedial classes for students at the institute, sorry, at the university, who feel that they are weak in english, I am teaching in that class by the way, not learning, contrary to what the linguistic skill displayed in my blog might suggest)I was trying to explain to the kiddos the meaning of the term new year's resolution.
in the past ten years, i had never come across someone who didn't know what the term meant, or one who hadn't made a resolution. but this kids didn't, and hadn't.
which got me thinking about the kind of people who feel the need to make resolutions, repeatedly, and about myself, who has been making the same resolutions for the past three years or so.
leaving aside chronic losers like Bridget Jones (though at the end of both Bridget Jones' Diary and The Edge of Reason she is anything but a loser, despite all the false starts and idiosyncrasies, she has won in love)and similar chick lit heroins desperately fighting bulges and the discourse of failed romance, who are the people who make resolutions?
there is me for starters,i feel that i am hopelessly unorganised, without any priorities in life, and in constant peril of losing focus. therefore a resolution, made almost monthly, should keep me on track.
the real picture however is very different. i often do not even remember that there are such things as resolutions or that i have made one, if i remember that i have made a resolution, i conveniently forget its contents. but more than anything else, there are so many things going wrong, and i am so disoriented/ lazy/ scared/ arrogant, that a nagging resolution at the back of my mind does nothing to resolve the mess that is my life.
take the resolve to lose weight as a case in point.
i have been fat all my life, and have wanted to lose weight for the equal amount of time. and the only times i manage to lose weight are when i am in the initial days of falling in love, with a fluttering heart and a losing appetite. but chronic falling in love is not a good idea, not for studies and for other assorted relationships that continue even when love disappears.
so, the bottom-line remains that keeping up resolutions are not for the weak hearted, in this case, moi.
but making resolutions should be anyone's cuppa tea, be the super-perfect planner or the OCD or whoever.
this brings me back to the my original question, who are the people who do not make resolutions? are they perfect? or merely content?
I'm sure you have heard the story of the foo who was given a stick to pass on to a greater fool, if he meets any. the man died with the stick still with him. he mighthave been the wisest person on earth.
ReplyDeletebut if you had a stick to pass on to the more feeble in sticking to resolutions, u know whom to give :)