It's not a good idea to pen down resolutions and keep them neatly in a folder. You're bound to find the paper (or papers if you are ambitious) when you're throwing out the old to make space for the new (an exercise some of us indulge in when the new year starts) and once you've come across those lined sheets there is no other option but to make a trip to the guilt motel.
After making several trips to the guilt motel last year, I have deleted the word resolution from my life. Resolutions, in my experience, are dangerous creatures. When I made resolutions last year, which I duly noted down, I limited myself to those six or seven points. I made a parameter around my life and put in 'ifs' and 'buts' over every action. 'If I do the above in two months' time, I am entitled to this. If I manage to finish this by ------ I will -----------'. I had become my own moral, emotional and spiritual policeman. A control freak. A sort of nasty departmental head.
Resolutions made me lose my spontaneity. If I wasn't able to meet a certain task at a specified time, I lost interest in doing it. Listing things down into neat sentences and keeping it all together in a folder did not make me a more organized person. It made me an unhappy person. And yet I kept going back to the list, hoping that by rearranging bits of it I'd find answers. It was only in the latter half of the year that I realized that the answers lay OUTSIDE the list.
The past year I did a lot of things which were not part of my resolution wish list. And it was these unplanned events which made me a different person; more fulfilled, happy and confident. As soon as I let the resolution list collect dust, I was able to leave my comfort zone and discover the new old me.
So I resolve to make no lists this year, except for grocery. Unplanned grocery shopping is a one-way ticket to the guilt motel!
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