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‘SO
what’s your New Year’s resolution?” my ex-classmate H.
jokingly inquired. We hadn’t seen each other in a while
as she had been working abroad for a time, and I bumped
into her—of all places—at the mall just a couple of days
before New Year’s Eve. We immediately sat down for cups
of coffee to catch up with the latest chismis
about our former schoolmates.
Amid the
screams and peals of laughter reminiscing over stupid
college antics, we had some discussion if we still
needed to make New Year’s resolutions and why people no
longer made them.
In true
skeptic’s fashion, I retorted, “Uso pa ba ’yon
[Is it still in fashion]?” I don’t remember making any
more New Year’s resolutions after I became an adult, and
New Year’s Eve took on another meaning—lots of panic
eating, binge drinking and partying on the beach with
friends.
H. still
believes in the concept—and that people no longer make
resolutions out of plain laziness. I think people no
longer make them because we’ve all become cynics and our
own worst critics. We know we won’t follow through with
our New Year’s goals, anyway.
Unfazed
with my negativity, and with total seriousness, H. said
she wanted to adopt a “more healthy” routine this year.
To start exercising and eat more vegetables. She said
she was going to go back to the gym and use the exercise
machines at least thrice a week, instead of wasting her
monthly gym membership fees. (Well, I told her she was
an idiot for not using her gym membership, especially
since New York gyms charge the most humongous fees!
Hellow?!)
Anyway,
I said I could use some more gym time myself, as per the
latest mounting on the weighing scale showed me the
impact on my gorgeous figure of the pints of Ben and
Jerry’s Ice Cream, a few shovelfuls of molten chocolate
lava cakes, and recent bites of lechon macau and
cochinillo.
But I
know myself. I’m not quite the person who would stick to
some commitment I’ve made (especially under duress and
because a friend was just egging me on to come up with a
resolution), even though I know I could probably push
through with it if I really wanted to.
I’m also
quite the contrarian. I’d probably violate my New Year’s
resolution just to show myself I could do so, and then
challenge myself to renew my commitment. Of course, more
often than not, the violation stays and old habits are
readopted out of laziness and convenience.
But H.
was persuasive. She said a New Year’s resolution wasn’t
“some kind of torture” one inflicts on oneself. To
commit to goals that we know we can never accomplish and
adopt certain behaviors which are beyond our
limitations. Most of the time, she said, this is the
mistake people make when they make their New Year’s
goals, and that’s why they fail so miserably in
accomplishing them, and then become disappointed with
themselves for failing.
It’s
more about changing one bad habit over time and choosing
to be a better and improved version of oneself, she
stressed. A New Year’s resolution gives us a chance to
make ourselves over.
She
insisted that the resolution doesn’t even have to be a
big one. As most people’s experiences show, the more
complicated the commitment you make (e.g. stop smoking
completely), the more likely you will break your
resolution. It can be as simple as resolving to start
one’s day with a prayer, making up your bed before
leaving home or, yes, even going to the gym twice a
week.
We both
theorized that the key to making sure one would stick to
his or her New Year’s resolution is to make it as
specific as possible and totally measurable. Like
instead of resolving to quit smoking, it has to be more
exact like cutting down from two packs of cigarettes a
day to just a pack a day. (I went cold turkey, too, when
I stopped smoking a decade ago, but then I wasn’t really
a heavy smoker to begin with. I just think for some
people, their bodies need time to adjust to the
reduction in nicotine intake before they finally cut it
off.)
Okay, so
let me humor H. and come up with my list. If I believed
in making New Year’s resolutions, these are the things I
will resolve to do:
§
Practice
yoga more regularly, like twice a week. Since my latest
trip to my doctor showed a slightly elevated diastolic,
maybe it’s time I adopt a more regular de-stressing
exercise routine.
§
Set
aside a travel fund. With the peso stronger against the
dollar these days, traveling abroad has become more
affordable. So saving up to be able to go on just one
gigantic dream vacation abroad is something I’d want to
do. Tuscany, here I come!
§
Clean
out the attic. Throw out all my college stuff. (C’mon,
some people even keep their grade-school mementos!)
§
I should
give away clothes, shoes and bags I no longer need.
Either use all the geegaws I’ve purchased in my travels
abroad, or gift them to somebody.
§
Organize
my stock of photos over the years into albums and boxes.
§
Get a
glaucoma exam. The eye condition runs in my family and
I’m at the age where it can start. Better start
monitoring it now.
And
finally…
§
Redecorate my bedroom. I’ve been trying to do this for a
couple of years already with not much success, primarily
because I have no talent whatsoever in interior
decorating. Never mind that I have a lot of fabulous
finds from the flea markets I frequent, I just cannot
organize all of them into an aesthetic and pleasing
fashion worthy of my hours of watching Clean House and
Extreme Makeover. I need a place that can really be a
sanctuary so I can shut myself away from whatever’s
happening in the real world. No TV allowed.
In
theory, they all sound good, but the hard part, of
course, is actually doing them. And thus, we still come
to the same question: Do we still need New Year’s
resolutions to beat back our bad habits, or give us more
impetus to reach a goal that we have been trying to
accomplish for years?
It works
for H. Perhaps it’s worth a try. |
