January is at its fag end, dawdling its feet to give the baton to February. It wasn’t long back that we had welcomed this month with so much fanfare- after all it ushered in the ‘new year’! How empowered and excited we all feel at this imminent changeover in the calendar and it comes with its own set of zing-bangs! RESOLUTIONS too are a part of this ‘old to new’ fest. It fits perfectly with all the adages of ‘new beginning’, ‘starting from the scratch’, ‘clean slate’ etc. The whole jazz of this exalted feeling, implores you to think on the lines of ‘NEW YEAR, NEW ME!’ And while we all know the truth behind New Year resolutions and how much do we actually stick to them, we go for those, nonetheless.
Not wanting to be left behind from this ‘resolutions bandwagon’, I too had made a list in my mind while welcoming the new year. No, it didn’t include losing weight and going for walk/run daily! This one used to figure in my list about a decade ago. Now I have made peace with my weighing scale. Every month when the needle shows a kg or two extras, I conveniently hide it behind all those ‘wise words’ I so often come across on our social media! Embrace your true self, love yourself and all such pleasing phrases!
And since weighing scale is no longer on the other side of the ‘enemy line’, ‘not eating sweets’ too doesn’t find any mention on my resolution list. Ahh…bless those people who come up with such nice, lovely ingenious quotes about loving yourself the way you are…! Life is to be enjoyed with each moment! etc. Waffles with extra scoop of vanilla and Belgian chocolate is all that I ask for now, when I go to my favourite café- moments I love the most!
Traveling figured in my list of resolutions before I came into the ‘Olive Green’ world. After having moved bag and baggage every two years and sometimes even one, I just want to be an immovable stone in my garden! Did I say ‘my garden’- Ok, till the time I move again!
But ‘international travel’ does figure in my list every year and every year I consider it ‘achieved’ by seeing all those stylish pics of my friends in different countries on FB, Insta! Whats App too comes handy in fulfilling this resolution! My friends helpfully send me those Grand Canyon, Burj Khalifa, Universal Studio, Eiffel Tower, Machu Picchu, Yosemite, Sidney harbour, Niagra Falls photos and I send them various emojis of hearts, applauds, thumbs up, peppered with few syllable words like wow! (even though my chair turns green in the process!) This year too, I consider that goal achieved- already.
Like last year, this year too I had made a resolution to use Smart phone only once in few hours instead of every few seconds. This thing had caused the death of conversation in real sense, I had realized. Hey, but what about the new write up, I just published! I look at the screen, just a tad bit, through the corners of my eyes while passing through the dining room.My phone was right there on the side table, gleaming enticingly. It showed number of notifications. I grabbed my phone. Etiquette demanded that I reply to those messages! Alright, I couldn’t stick to that resolution but at least I was holding on to another one- ‘spending more time with family and friends’ resolution- I was WhatsApping ( made it a verb just now, Oxford Dictionary are you listening?) them on the family groups, writing on their timelines on their anniversaries, birthdays and commenting on their photos! Phew!!
Anyways, these were all ‘done to death’ resolutions. I needed something chic, something I could stick to. I checked the list of most popular and yet difficult to achieve resolutions. There it was- something that I needed. Flossing more regularly! This was something I was doing anyway- more out of dread of that drilling sound at the dentist’s than for anything else. Having Two RCTs and about five fillings- what would you expect from a person who would eat even plain sugar candy, if there wouldn’t be any other sweet stuff (read gourmet ) around- had made me a regular at flossing many years ago. I just had to ensconce that habit into my resolution list and voila, I was done! After failing at ‘get organised’- gosh how badly do I need that, next year may be- and ‘learn something new’- I had tried to enroll for French and failed miserably- échoué lamentablement, ‘floss regularly’ is all I am left with! This shall do for this year and may be many more years till I have my teeth ! But I am not giving up on my ‘international travel’, smart phone de-addiction, ‘get organised’ and other such stuff either. Have only saved them for next year you see !
Copyright © Aradhana Mishra