If there were an annual prize for breaking New Year’s
resolutions, I would definitely be on the long list each year without fail,
possibly never to win until I became a doddering old coot on whom the jury
finally had mercy and delivered a lifetime (non) achievement award, just to put
me out of my misery. As the days grow short and a slight nip starts to appear
in the evenings, the time has come to once again have a keen and honest look at
the months gone by. In the interest of not jinxing myself, these are not “new
year’s resolutions”, but merely observations on the year gone by. Any
implication of resolutions is at the sole discretion of the reader, and the
author cannot be held accountable for any failure to comply with any changes in
self, behaviour, habits or lifestyle implied by what follows.
Number one: If
you do not exercise, your trousers develop an irritating habit of shrinking in
the waistline area whilst hanging in the closet. And, following some kind of
perverse law of nature, the better stitched the trousers, the greater the
tendency to shrink. What exactly is the correlation between spontaneous
shrinkage in fabric and lack of exercise is not clear yet, but I am sure there
is some university somewhere conducting research into this.
Number two:
Television is not your friend. Sure, after a long day’s work there is nothing
more tempting than to just veg out in front of the screen, flicking channels
and watching morning show reruns that run into each other, but it is ultimately
a means of reducing your brain to mush, and your attention span to that of a
fruitfly. There is a reason why it is called the idiot box, and that reason is
how compelling watching people bounce off big red balls and into a swimming
pool can be.
Number three:
Books are not just for reading in the loo. And newspapers are not just for
scanning over a Sunday morning coffee. Both deserve an investment of time and
an effort of engaging brain cells. In this age of smart phones and angry birds,
even that previously exclusive domain of the printed word, the aircraft, has
become largely eroded by games and apps which require ever shorter attention
spans, and the ability to revert to a previous save point at the slightest sign
of trouble. Not a great teaching tool for our children in the game of life, but
a compelling escape from the same for the kidults. In case you hadn’t noticed,
there are no save points in the workplace (or at home either, for that matter).
Number four:
Farmville isn’t real. The time spent fertilising mythical crops and asking for fictitious
nails to build make-believe horse stables can be better utilized in so many
ways that there are not enough column inches available to recount them all. That
said, let me just alt-tab to see how my Aloe Vera is getting on…
Number five: On
the same note, friendships should not occur in the ether, but in the flesh.
Social media may be great in breaking down borders, but if something is
bothering you it is better to talk it out with a friend over a cup of coffee
than to tweet about it, just like it is better to invite people to your wedding
through the old fashioned “phone call” rather than setting up an event on
Facebook and letting people RSVP.
On that note, it seems that there are tiers to wedding
invitees. There are the ones who you really want to be there, who are
personally handed an invitation by self or member of family. In the next tier
are the ‘good-to-haves’, whose cards are dropped off by a driver or runner.
Next in line are the ‘I need to invite these guys, but don’t really mind if
they don’t turn up’ category, who are sent a scanned card via email. And
finally, the lowest of the low, are the Facebook invitees, whose count never
even makes it into the catering calculations.
[Of course, this just shows that I belong to the 'uncle' crowd. Younger colleagues inform me that for their weddings, the Facebook invite was for real, and people thus invited were not only expected to turn up, but actually did.]
Number six: Sleep
is good, but spending time with people you care about is even better. Although
ideally the first meal one should eat on a Sunday is dinner, that would mean
that the one day that you actually can spend some time at home supergluing your
fingers together in lieu of fixing the ironing stand, or helping in the Grand
Appliance Defrosting Marathon by identifying jars of expired red curry paste,
is instead spent having strange dreams that leave you with no recollection, but
an uneasy feeling that lasts the whole day.
That said, it is always fun to snooze in and out of a
football match that you are interested in but don’t care about, and I have been
waiting to try out the napping capabilities of the new recliner…
Number seven:
Dentists cost money. A lot of money. It is ultimately better to spend three
minutes a day brushing your teeth in the evening, and perhaps taking on dental
floss, than to spend several session in the chair having stuff drilled, probed
and stuffed. Unfortunately, this does eat into time that was otherwise
dedicated to watching people bounce off big red balls into a swimming pool /
breeding virtual sheep in your second not-real farm. Is the reward worth the
sacrifice? This jury is out on that one…
Number eight: Friends don’t grow on trees
(although some of my most memorable photos are of friends hanging from trees,
oddly enough). They are a rare and precious commodity, worth their weight in
gold (even more so if they suddenly drop 30% of their body weight – you know
who you are). As such, the effort of will required to stay in touch with them
is fully justified, and is the right and proper thing to do. The evening
commute home is normally a good time for this, and certainly a better use of
those minutes than listening to the banal banter of radio presenters with
affected personalities.
I have recently been informed that Denial is not a river in
Egypt. Hopefully, Optimism is some form of topography somewhere in the world
(answers on a postcard please). So I will end this year in hope. That
researchers find a way for trousers to automatically adjust to your waistline
without resorting to elastic waistbands. That cable operators reduce the quality
of channels available even further (if that is possible) so that there is one
fewer rival to picking up a book. That birds lose their anger, and make believe
farms their addictiveness. That friends pick up their phones, and calls get
returned sooner, and coffee plans materialise. That Sundays are lazy, yet
companionable.
That new year’s resolutions last a year, and are fulfilled.
Originally published in Dawn, January 2012
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