Oh, those Resolutions!
Valmiki Faleiro
 

Church bells chime the midnight hour; firecrackers pierce the stillness of the night.  Crisp calendars and almanacs embellish walls; freshly minted diaries at the work desk.  Herald the dawn of a brand new year !

 “Ring out the old, Ring in the new.”  Hey, what’s special?  Is it not a transition in time like any other, like the hands of the everyday clock ticking away from one hour to the next, from one day to another? 

 This one, though, touches us personally and in a special way … celebrations apart, this one is about time to introspect – time to take stock, review past blemishes, and resolve steps towards that lofty goal: self-improvement, perfection.

 New Year’s Day, by whichever reckoning one adheres – Gregorian, Islamic, Chinese, Hindu, Hebrew, Parsi – is a festivity of special significance to the individual, distinctive from community feasts and festivals, celebrated by humankind down five millennia of recorded history.

 One may belong to a religion or culture that regards time as linear (one that starts from the point of a *Beginning* and relentlessly progresses towards that of *an End of time* – as in the case of Christians, the end point being the Second Coming of Christ.)  Or one may belong to a faith that perceives time as cyclical (with no beginning and no end.)

 Irrespective, the Year’s first day is special, when we reflect on, and try to comprehend, our status in the cosmos … the complete, orderly and perfectly harmonious system of the universe … messed up by the imperfections of man, or the sum total of each of us, individuals.  It’s the day in the calendar when we resolve to attune ourselves to the harmony of nature, to become wee bit better individuals.

 Ancient peoples of Mesopotamia observed New Year at the onset of life-sustaining rains ...  a celebration of the victory of Order in Mother Nature over chaos.  The gods of fertility were propitiated with sacrificial grain; the people then feasted and danced.  Like now, when we celebrate New Year's Day as a time of victory of order over disorder.

 At an individual level, Jan 1 is a sublime and significant day of introspection and review.  Every individual, of whatever status, calling or belief, will PAUSE.  To look back on the year that was, on his own shortcomings, and target towards a better self in the year to be.   

 In between myriad endeavours and our human frailties, each of us deep within yearns for perfection, yielding to New Year resolutions.  And firming up resolve to redeem the resolutions until the year runs its course.

 As Alfred Tennyson poetically cooed, though in a different context, it is the time of the year to “ring in nobler modes of life, with sweeter manners, purer…”  The idealism of leading nobler lives, with sweeter manners.

 As kids, we wrote down New Year resolutions, dozens of them in each annual tranche.  (To my eternal regret, in the years of growth to adulthood, and what I thought was *maturity*, I tore and threw away those carefully preserved yearly lists of resolves.  Today, they sure would have made interesting reading, producing smiles, may be even a few tears!)

 Into adulthood, and the age of rationalism, when one read guys like John Stewart Mill and Bertrand Russell, my abiding love for New Year resolutions, paradoxically, never really wavered – much like my heathen forebears, who after conversion to Christianity, could never really shed subtle forms of idolatry or their cherished caste pigeonholes!

The intrinsic beauty of New Year resolutions lies in the invariable inability to live by them beyond a few weeks, at best a couple of months.  But better be perfect in thought than in act!  What a dull and dreary world would it be if all were perfect!  And where would be the scope for that little inner excitement of making solemn promises to oneself just once in the year?

 For instance, the more I resolve to imbibe less of wine, women and song (unlike Omar Khayyam, women as in my luring *Lady* Nicotine cancer sticks), I more than make up for the period of abstinence as the calendar wears off.  But that’s no reason to feel discouraged or altogether stop making resolutions!  Good resolutions, after all, spring from good intentions.

 Did I hear someone say, “Good intentions pave the way to hell”?  Ha!  As you polish your own little list of resolves this sunny Sunday morning, may you have a bright and blessed 2006!

submitted to TGF by the author on Jan 1, 2006

[Valmiki Faleiro is a Margao based businessman who earlier worked as Staff Reporter for the erstwhile WEST COAST TIMES and later as Goa Correspondent with Mumbai's FREE PRESS JOURNAL Group, and the INDIAN EXPRESS newspaper.  He served as the President of the  Margao Municipality from 1985 to 1987. He has indicated that he hopes to return soon to full-time writing, with a special interest on certain aspects of Goan history.] 

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