New Year Resolution

I just want to take out a moment to thank in a very special way everyone, known or unknown, who added value to my life in the year 2012. I also thank those who did not add value too!

In every New Year’s eve, as a teenager, there was nothing I enjoyed doing more than throwing bangers, which we notably called “knock outs” in the air and watching them explode noisily. Then I would tell my gullible parents that I was going to attend the New Year’s eve church service, but would end up hanging out with my friends terrorizing churchgoers with bangers. We often bought bangers with monies we pinched from our parents. My parents had nothing to be stolen. You would never find a reasonable amount in my mother’s purse and my father’s pockets were always as empty as a man’s testies after a night in a bordello. But my friends’ parents were well-to-do. So I was always the chief planner and advisor on how they would run down their parents’ pockets. With the amount we needed in our pockets, we would set out to hit our targets. And our targets were mostly those girls who turned us down when we asked them out. It was really a reveling experience, especially when we threw the bangers in-between them as they walked together. And walla! The bangers would explode and the sudden sounds would send the girls running for their lives!

This is that time of the year when people engage in that thingamajig: New Year Resolution. Every New Year’s eve comes with a thoughtful reminiscence of how the concluding year has run thus far. But what baffles me, remarkably, is that one hardly finds people who have resolved to love Mondays! One reads often those catchy resolutions like I will quit smoking, stop womanizing (for men) or at least have one girl friend or sugar mummy, stop being sluttish (for women) or at least try to maintain one boy friend or cash cow, stop drinking alcohol or drink less, lose 20 pounds, find a job, eat healthy, attend church service(s) frequently, and the list continues.

Most people have this ‘wrong’ notion that once they have technically made their New Year’s resolutions on New Year’s eve or New Year’s day, as if they are in technical rehearsal, that things will begin to fall in place abruptly in their lives. Let’s say I was a smoker, and on New Year’s eve or day I technically resolved to quit smoking. For the fact that New Year’s eve is just like any other night; and New Year’s day an annex of the New Year’s eve, I, the smoker, who had been on a smoking spree or roll with fellas on the eve with my system thus inundated with nicotine would not be expected to hastily stop smoking on the stroke of New Year’s resolutions. What if I was as fat as a pig? Dieting on New Year’s day with the mindset that I would lose whatever considerable amount of pounds I had listed on my resolution list would be wonky. There is no way I can eat reasonably; rather I can eat freely whatever essential I need to eat in a snail’s pace so I can peter out my relics. As Mark Twain rightly said, “now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”

At this time of the year you will never fail to read people’s entertaining wishes for the New Year. Watch out you’ll never miss such wishes like God please make my bank account fat and my body thin, and most importantly do not mix things up like you did last year. Some would even wish God to calculate all their future earnings for the next 50 years and pay them up front in January because life is too short; YOLO!

I have been asked severally whether I make New Year’s resolutions. Frankly, I used to, but stopped when I realized the vanity in making a January resolution that will be abandoned by February. I quite agree with Sophocles’ that “men should pledge themselves to nothing; for reflection makes a liar of their resolution.” But if it is your take to make resolutions always remember the words of Abraham Lincoln, “always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.’’

To wrap up this year, I think that the most significant lesson I have learnt, not necessarily in 2012, but over the little times I have spent on this planet, is how much the ‘friendly relations’ that I have worth to me, and how much I value my family. The feelings come with adding more numbers to my age and getting older. Lest I forget, I have resolved in James Agate’s words, “to tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.”

Happy New Year in advance!