BENGALURU : Growing up in a small town, my memory of New Year is of greeting cards. Handmade (or purchased from the nearby stall) cards, and post-cards with film-stars would arrive from distant cousins, wishing us a merry X’mas and a happy New Year.Somewhere down the line, new years descended into chaos and debauchery. For many years, I believed that New Years brought out the worst side of human beings – men and women barely conscious, scrounging for free booze. Cheap bars, unlimited drinks, existential DJs and drunken fights, till it all began to feel revolting. Thankfully, the pandemic changed all that.
For the first time in decades, a New Year’s eve was celebrated in a subdued manner. There were no eardrum-shattering DJs, no fireworks to celebrate the grand occasion of the earth completing another circle around the sun, and our souls and wallets felt full and warm. Just us, our existential dread, and New Year’s resolutions.
Google informs me that New Year’s resolutions have been a common practice since the 17th century, when people would note down in journals the different ways they’d better themselves. In a way, this thought is in line with human nature itself. The leitmotif behind religion and spirituality is to be the best version of oneself. The essence of self-help books is to improve oneself. New Year’s resolutions give us the underlying belief that it is possible to change for the better.
A little more research informed me that the most common resolutions around the world are fitness-related – losing weight and exercising more. I also learnt that only 8 per cent of people around the world are able to live up to their resolutions. While I do not unnecessarily burden myself with weight-related resolutions, my life can be divided into three distinct resolution categories. In childhood, my resolutions revolved around a fear of god. I resolved to pray to god more; to be a better human being.
Resolutions in my 20s revolved around getting into a good MBA college. Without the foresight that I’d become a journalist and stand-up comedian, I resolved to work harder and escape into the seemingly exciting world of MBAs. Dreams are great when you see them, but the reality was that I had barely scraped through my Class-10 mathematics. I sat in front of the coaching manuals, my mind experiencing a cruel deja vu from board exam preparations.
Which is when a friend told me about the concept of lucid dreaming. This path-breaking meditation method involved visualising what one wanted. Since I wasn’t making any breakthroughs in mathematics, I decided to lucid-dream about getting into an MBA college. For the next few years, I’d begin the New Year with coaching manuals, and quickly slip into my fantasies of MBA colleges. Needless to say, I wouldn’t recommend this method to impressionable youngsters reading this column.
Over the last few years, I have flirted with resolutions around personal growth. Holistic living, productivity, and work-life balance were the new-age terms I was going for. With fitness-related goals, one can actually quantify one’s progress. But with self-improvement goals, there are no barometers. The days of January and early-February are often spent in self-scrutiny. But the pandemic changed all that.
The year 2020 taught us that New Year’s resolutions could be a luxury in times when life seems like a ‘going concern’. Maybe this year, Dear Reader, is a fantastic opportunity to let go of the burden of resolutions and stop-gap remedies. Of course, if you nurture resolutions (MBA-related or otherwise), you have my best wishes. But if you’re the sort who doesn’t wish to have any resolutions at all, you have my unending support. I wish you a happy, vaccine-filled New Year!